Jaç Hi-Fi Café by Isern Serra combines coffee culture with hi-fi listening in Barcelona

Located on Avinguda Diagonal, JAÇ HiFi Café by Isern Serra transforms the traditional café into a space dedicated as much to listening as to gathering. Opening in 2025, the 95 square meter project draws inspiration from the Japanese jazz kissa, intimate postwar listening cafés where music was experienced with near ritualistic attention through high fidelity sound systems.

Created for clients Ligia and Arnau, JAÇ adopts this culture of focused listening while translating it into a softer Mediterranean atmosphere. The café’s name references jazz itself, the Japanese kissa tradition, and the Catalan word “jaç,” meaning to recline, rest, and let go. Together, these meanings shape a space conceived less as a commercial venue than as an immersive interior for music, conversation, and pause.

The interior unfolds through a sequence of connected zones, each calibrated to offer a different relationship between sound, intimacy, and the city outside. Near the entrance, a lounge area centers around a concrete based sofa fitted with custom beige cushions, accompanied by walnut tables and stools that establish the café’s restrained material palette.

A softly illuminated Isamu Noguchi Akari E lamp introduces a warm domestic atmosphere, while artwork by Chidy Wayne adds visual contrast against the muted microcement surfaces.

Toward the center of the café, a large walnut wood bar functions simultaneously as counter, furniture object, and acoustic device. Produced by Fusteria Vidal, the monolithic element integrates vinyl storage, baked goods displays, and custom speakers developed by Bloom Island. Cut from continuous slabs of walnut, the cabinetry preserves the natural grain across surfaces, allowing sound equipment to merge seamlessly into the architecture itself.

At the core of the room, a stainless steel communal table introduces a sharper, almost brutalist presence softened by surrounding timber seating and diffused lighting. Suspended above, the Lámina pendant designed by Antoni Arola for Santa & Cole casts a quiet ambient glow that reinforces the café’s cinematic atmosphere.

The project’s most immersive gesture appears toward the rear of the café, where a sculptural walnut installation curves across walls and ceiling to create a semi enclosed listening alcove. Divided by a cylindrical timber column and lined with vinyl shelving, the structure integrates stainless steel speakers by Bloom Island while enveloping visitors within a continuous surface of warm wood.

Rather than functioning as decoration, the installation becomes architecture itself: part acoustic chamber, part furniture landscape, part spatial instrument. Integrated seating, low walnut tables, and carefully controlled lighting create a quieter atmosphere where the act of listening becomes central to the spatial experience.

Additional intimate zones are distributed throughout the café, including a recessed window seating area overlooking the street and discreetly concealed service spaces. Even the façade participates in the narrative. Clad in iroko wood stained to match the walnut interior, the entrance incorporates four circular indentations referencing speaker cones, while glimpses of the sculptural listening alcove remain visible from the street.

Throughout the project, materials are used to create continuity and calm. Floors, ceilings, and walls are finished in warm beige microcement, forming a monochromatic backdrop against which walnut surfaces acquire greater depth and presence. Stainless steel introduces moments of precision and reflectivity, while custom upholstered seating softens the harder architectural elements.

Lighting is treated as an integral architectural layer rather than an accessory. Fixtures by Jordi Miralbell and Mariona Reventós subtly mark transitions between spaces, reinforcing the café’s shifting atmospheres between openness and intimacy.

More than a reinterpretation of the jazz kissa, JAÇ HiFi Café proposes a slower urban experience for contemporary Barcelona, where architecture, music, and hospitality converge through tactility, sound, and spatial restraint.

Project Credit

Project name: JAÇ HiFi Café
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Design firm: Isern Serra Studio / @isernserra
Photo: Salva Lopez / @salvalopez