Voyager Lab in Montréal, Québec, CA
Designed by designPROGRAM / Toby Gauley
Voyager Lab in Montréal is a new kind of café—one that positions itself not just as a place to serve coffee, but as a place to reveal it. Designed by Toby Gauley of designPROGRAM, the space strips away the excesses of traditional café interiors to showcase the working systems of a high-functioning coffee lab. As a concept, it’s minimalist but not sterile; raw but considered. I was especially drawn to how the functional coffee equipment—filters, pipes, machines—are not hidden behind walls or enclosures but exposed with intention, becoming part of the design language. In this interview, we unpack the thinking behind the project and its implications for the future of hospitality spaces.
photography by Arielle Livernoche, published with bowerbird
What was the initial design brief for Voyager Lab, and how did you interpret it through a minimalist lens?
The brief was to establish Voyager Lab as a cutting-edge, forward-thinking café—not just a place to consume coffee, but to witness its evolution. The brand wanted to position itself as a thought leader in beverage culture. We interpreted this through a minimalist lens by stripping away anything unnecessary, both visually and functionally. Instead of covering the mechanics, we exposed them. The aesthetic clarity supports the scientific ethos—what you’re seeing is exactly what you get.
Transparency—both physical and philosophical—is central to the space. How did that idea shape your layout and detailing?
Transparency is the design’s backbone. The filtration systems, lab equipment, and back-of-house operations are all in clear view—through transparent partitions and open sightlines. This layout reflects Voyager’s belief in nothing to hide, a coffee lab where process and precision are visible. Even the materials and junctions were detailed to remain honest—no cladding or decorative cover-ups. It’s all out in the open, and that’s the point.
How did you balance high-end visual impact with the project’s tight budget? Were there any specific material or design hacks?
The challenge was to make $50K look like $1M—and we achieved that through design strategy over spending.
We leaned into “exposed mechanics” to avoid building enclosures, letting the machines themselves become part of the design. We used luxury materials like exotic burl wood, but only in key high-impact moments—like the entry column—to elevate the space with minimal quantity.
We turned common fluorescent lights into a lighting program by adding color gels, creating a ceiling feature that feels both playful and intentional. The result is a space that feels elevated, even though it’s built on restraint and resourcefulness.
Voyager Lab draws inspiration from science fiction and the Centre Pompidou. How did these influences inform your design vocabulary?
Sci-fi and the Centre Pompidou informed both the aesthetic and the attitude. Pompidou’s radical move—exposing infrastructure—became a core reference. We brought that idea inside, making the lab’s internal systems visible and celebrated.
From sci-fi, we borrowed a sense of surreal futurism, which influenced the curved glass, composite grilles, and the lighting’s reflective interplay. It’s a playful dystopia—one that’s strangely warm and deeply familiar, yet unlike any other café.
The lighting design feels intentional and atmospheric. Can you walk us through the thinking behind the fluorescent fixtures and color gels?
We used off-the-shelf fluorescent tubes, the kind you’d find in a school or lab—precisely because of their clinical familiarity. But by spacing them rhythmically and adding colored film gels to every second fixture, we created a lighting system that was tunable and immersive.
The gels allow for different moods—warm ambers, cool whites, or a mix. Reflections through translucent partitions amplify the effect. It’s a reminder that with intent and placement, even the most mundane object can feel like a design feature.
How do you see Voyager Lab evolving the café typology—and what does it suggest about the future of hospitality spaces?
Voyager breaks the mold of the cozy, plant-filled café by offering a lab experience—a place of experimentation, clarity, and modern ritual. It embraces transparency, not just as a material strategy, but as a brand value.
As hospitality moves forward, spaces like this will serve not only as places to eat and drink, but as environments that reflect process, intent, and ideology. Voyager is a prototype for a new kind of hospitality: one that’s intelligent, integrated, and unapologetically future-facing.
