Open Book Café
Project Overview
From NAAFI to Open Book: rethinking a museum café
Every space tells a story, although sometimes that story needs to change.
At The Tank Museum, the café area was previously themed as a modern Afghan NAAFI canteen, complete with desert textures and impact detailing. It worked powerfully alongside the Afghanistan exhibition; however, when the museum introduced our new Ukraine exhibition, the space needed to evolve.
Our response was the creation of the Open Book Café:
a shared social, retail, and interpretive space that blends café culture with storytelling, learning, and museum retail best practices.
Introduction & Back Story
The Open Book Café project was born from the need to rethink a highly specific themed space and transform it into something more flexible, welcoming, and future-facing. As The Tank Museum’s exhibition programme evolved, so too did the role of its social spaces.
Previously tied closely to a single exhibition narrative, the café needed to become a place that could support changing stories, diverse audiences, and everyday museum life. The challenge was to retain depth and meaning while creating a calm, inclusive environment that worked equally well as a café, shop, and informal learning space.
The Open Book Café emerged as a response to this shift, using layered storytelling, adaptable design, and subtle interpretation to create a space that feels both purposeful and inviting, whatever the exhibition context around it.
