VE/LA THONGLOR (VELA CAFE FLAGSHIP)

haus VE/LA — Building a brand's first home, exactly as drawn
Project type: Retail & café interior fit-out · Thonglor, Bangkok · 2 floors, approx. 132 sqm · 2026

Overview

haus VE/LA is the global flagship of VE/LA, the Bangkok coffee and matcha brand that grew from a single espresso bar on Sukhumvit 42 into eleven Bangkok cafés and a flagship in Mayfair, London. It was conceived as the brand's home rather than another branch: a coffee and matcha bar, an in-house bakery, a retail floor, and a signature menu served nowhere else.

The challenge

The brand spent almost five months designing the space, considering every surface, joint and shadow in advance. Smile Exhibit's task was to bring that level of detail to life across two floors in 30 days, without compromising materials or craft.

What we did

Smile Exhibit delivered the full interior fit-out: electrical, plumbing and air-conditioning works, tiled flooring, timber wall cladding, a curved steel-framed spiral staircase, a stone-topped bar counter, and custom retail shelving, benches and tables made for this room.

To hold the schedule, services were sequenced ahead of finishes and joinery was produced off-site in parallel with site works. The staircase radius was measured on site before the steel was bent. The bar, the heart of the room, was built and levelled to support the brand's new service concept: machines moved to the back, with the pour and the craft brought to the front.

The result

haus VE/LA opened on 26 July 2026, the brand's fifth anniversary. Layered timbers, stone and pools of warm light work with windows over nine metres high that catch Thonglor's late-afternoon sun.