COPS Brings Art, Design and Doughnuts to Riverside

COPS is not a doughnut shop, but a global creative studio that aims to merge style, art, design and hospitality… that also happens to sell really amazing doughnuts. For its third location in the city, the brand partnered with local architecture practice Kilogram Studio to create an atmosphere that is undeniably abrupt, cool and quintessentially COPS. The result is a vividly industrial 1,600-square-foot space juxtaposed by pops of colour and a gentle glimmer of sunlight that pours in from a wall of west-facing gridded windows.

At first glance, the shop is an evident departure from COPS’s airy Yorkdale flagship and pretty-in-pink Adelaide outlet. Embodying the brand’s identity of luxury and grit, Kilogram Studio’s design for the Riverside location centres on monochromatic industrial elements inspired by the building’s previous life as a car repair garage. “Our starting point was the existing building which had many versions of textured masonry which were added over its long life,” says principal architect Kfir Gluzberg. “We wanted to use that language, which connects the building to the neighbourhood, and uses it to relate to the doughnuts sold in the shop.”

Drawing inspiration from the emotional response to eating a delicious doughnut, pops of pink and purple from COPS’s packaging are integrated seamlessly into the design, keeping the brutalists at bay. “Our approach was to use that moment of ecstasy as a driving force behind our choice of materials and interaction with the brand in the space,” says Gluzberg. In addition to elegant glass panels, illuminated LED circles by Radikal Neon direct customers to where they can order and pick up their orders.

The studio worked directly with builder Bootstrap Design and masonry Richvale York Block to learn about the tools and opportunities that lay within the building. Together, they formed subtractive and additive processes for how certain materials were worked. “COPS doughnuts are made with funnels that cast forms in hot oil, so the concept of piping mortar onto polished blocks that were pre-cast resonates strongly in the final design,” says Gluzberg.

On a laneway busy with pedestrian traffic, COPS is an understated mark of Riverside’s gradual evolution from an industrial zone to one of the city’s most sought-after neighbourhoods. As an incubator of inspiration, this embedded doughnut shop is a testament to the power of high design intended to inspire those that it comes into contact with, in some way, shape or form. KILOGRAMSTUDIO.CA.