Jaç
Coffee, music, Lámina 85 and Disco at Jaç, a jazz kissa-inspired café through a Mediterranean filter.
Coffee is not meant to be rushed here, nor taken with an open laptop. Jaç proposes a different pace and idea of what a café can be. Located in Barcelona’s Eixample, this new café by Isern Serra takes a tradition born thousands of miles away and brings it through a Mediterranean filter.
The reference is jazz kissa the small, dimly lit Japanese cafés that emerged after the Second World War as refuges for music lovers. When few people could afford records or high-fidelity sound systems, these places offered something close to a ceremony. Conversation receded, speakers took center stage, and each album got the attention of a concert. They were true temples of sound.
Jaç takes up that legacy and adapts it to Barcelona, dropping the solemnity. The name says it: jaç means to recline, to rest, to let yourself go in Catalan. Within 95 m² (1,022 sq ft), walnut wood, warm-toned microcement, stainless steel, curves, build a space where the music has somewhere to land.
Disco 1995, Jordi Miralbell, Mariona Raventós
Lámina 85 2018, Antoni Arola
“Lighting was treated as another architectural element: each piece was chosen not only for its form, but for how it builds atmosphere, marks transitions, and frames moments within the café. Lámina by Antoni Arola and Disco by Jordi Miralbell and Mariona Raventós were chosen because both refer to Japanese aesthetics: simplicity and warm, indirect light. Lámina sits just above the custom table; both are stainless-steel. It also brings in the same play of curves that appears on the wooden walls. A long light that anchors the space. As for Disco, it is a simple, assertive classic that creates a very pleasant effect: a backlight through a metalized circle that echoes the speakers on the wall. We also placed it on the façade as an iconic element of the space,”
explains Isern.
