Latte Hub Office Case Study: An Industrial-Loft Fit-Out With Exposed Brick and Black Steel

Not every business needs a neutral, minimalist office. For creative agencies, tech companies, or service firms with a young team, an industrial-loft style — exposed brick, black steel, raw wood — is often chosen because it cuts down on finish-surface costs (no need for multiple layers of skim coat and paint) while giving the brand a distinct personality. The Latte Hub office fit-out is a concrete case study in executing this style correctly from a construction standpoint, delivering real operating function rather than stopping at surface-level aesthetics.

Starting Condition and Initial Direction

The Latte Hub floor plate was approached with an industrial design direction from the outset — keeping or restoring sections of exposed brick wall, combined with a black ceiling system that leaves service runs visible rather than fully concealing them behind a flat gypsum ceiling. This approach requires tight coordination between the design team and the M&E contractor starting from the drawings, since every duct and conduit run becomes part of the space's visual identity — unlike closed-ceiling projects, where ductwork can be routed more freely without affecting the overall look.

The functional challenge was organizing three space types on a single floor plate at once: a focused work area, a shared pantry area, and an enclosed meeting room — while keeping a consistent material language throughout so the space doesn't feel disjointed between functional zones.

Per the project records, the Latte Hub floor plate totals 250 m² in Hanoi, with a 6-week construction schedule. Enter Office's scope on this project was interior fit-out construction (building out an existing design), not the initial design work itself.

Layout Solution Across Three Functional Zones

Open Work Area Along the Main Axis

The work area is laid out as straight desk runs along the floor plate's main axis, using black steel-frame desks with engineered wood tops, set on a polished concrete floor — a fitting choice for the industrial style since it needs no premium finish treatment while still holding up to daily wear and staying easy to clean in a high-traffic zone. One side of the floor plate uses a black-framed glass partition against the adjacent area, providing basic acoustic separation while letting natural light carry the full length of the work area.

Structural Columns Turned Into Display Features Instead of Being Hidden

One notable layout solution on this project was making use of the wood-clad structural columns at the boundary between the work area and support areas, integrating open shelving directly into them to display plants, ceramics and decor pieces. Rather than treating a structural column as an obstacle to hide behind a sealed technical box, this solution turns the column into a visual anchor while creating a soft boundary between two functional zones without building an additional partition — saving floor area and material cost compared to a conventional room-dividing wall.

Pantry and Coffee Bar Facing the Windows

The pantry sits next to the main entrance, with a built-in kitchen counter and a tall bar table running along the window line to make the most of natural light for the break area — a layout decision that gives the shared social space the best view and light in the floor plate, rather than reserving that position for an enclosed office as a conventional layout would. This fits a work culture that values informal break space, common among younger teams.

Construction Details and Real-World Materials

Exposed Brick Paired With Black Melamine Cabinetry

The pantry uses bare exposed brick as the backdrop for a solid black Melamine kitchen cabinet run, with a white engineered-stone countertop — the contrast between rough red brick and a flat, smooth black cabinet surface is a common material-pairing technique in industrial-style spaces, used to avoid a flat, monotonous look when raw materials dominate. The cabinetry integrates a coffee machine and a built-in fridge, meeting the technical requirements for outlet capacity and a separate water supply and drain line for the shared social area, kept independent from the work area's electrical system.

Herringbone Flooring Marks the Zone Transition

Unlike the work area's polished concrete, the pantry and lounge switch to herringbone-laid engineered wood flooring — a technique that divides space through flooring material rather than a physical partition, letting people read the functional boundary naturally as they move between zones without cutting the overall space into pieces.

Meeting Room: Mesh Steel Ceiling and Black-Framed Glass

The meeting room uses a white-painted crimped mesh grid ceiling, distinct from the black ceiling in the main work area, giving the room a brighter, more formal feel while still carrying the industrial spirit through one exposed-brick wall. The meeting room partition uses a black steel frame with tempered glass, keeping sightlines open to the work area outside — consistent with the principle of letting natural light carry through even where the space is broken into separate rooms. The meeting table is engineered wood finished in walnut-grain Laminate, with a recessed cable tray down the center to hide charging cables and projector connections — a small construction detail that directly affects the room's day-to-day usability.

Pendant Lighting and Zone-Specific Fixtures

Each functional zone uses a different fixture type matched to its purpose: linear pendants run along the main work axis for even light across the area, industrial-style black-shade pendants over the pantry bar create warmer accent lighting, and a single linear fixture in the meeting room focuses light on the main table. Layering fixture types by function rather than using one uniform fixture across the whole floor plate is the right lighting approach for a space with several distinct functional zones on one floor.

Considering an industrial-style fit-out but not sure how much materials budget to plan for? Does your current space actually support keeping exposed brick and a real ceiling system? Send Enter Office your CAD file or PDF of the existing condition — we'll survey the site and put together a free Test Fit (preliminary space plan) within 48 hours so you can make an accurate decision before signing a construction contract.

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Results After Handover

On completion, the Latte Hub floor plate achieved a consistent material language across all three functional zones (work area, pantry, meeting room), while turning existing structural columns and brick walls into an aesthetic asset instead of an added cost to conceal — an approach that optimized the fit-out budget compared to building an entirely new finish surface from scratch.

The project was completed in 6 weeks across a total floor area of 250 m², under the interior fit-out construction scope. [Cost per m² and a direct client quote to be added once final settlement figures and written client feedback are available.]

Implementation Lessons for the Industrial-Loft Style

The Latte Hub project shows that the industrial style is only cost-effective when architecture, M&E and materials are planned together from day one — any exposed duct or structural element has to be built with intent, not treated the way a closed ceiling would allow. Enter Office runs industrial-style projects by coordinating M&E drawings with finish drawings from the design stage onward, so the raw aesthetic never comes at the cost of construction quality.