In Athens, Georgios Apostolopoulos Architects reshapes a corner shop into Ugly Rolls — a calm, glazed intervention where the transparency of making meets the generosity of street-level hospitality.
The corner smells like cinnamon before you see the shop. Ugly Rolls occupies a small footprint in central Athens — an existing corner unit that Georgios Apostolopoulos Architects has reshaped into something unexpectedly generous. The move is simple: a new glazed metal façade paired with solid lower panels that conceal the working counters while exposing everything else. The preparation of cinnamon rolls becomes visible theatre. The interior reads from the street like a vitrine, calm and legible, in a neighbourhood where most food operations barricade themselves behind opacity.
The shop divides into two connected zones. At the corner, a vertically opening window serves rolls and coffee directly to the pavement — a permeable membrane between production and street life that turns a transaction into an encounter. Behind the glazed façade, the second area accommodates the full production process, visible from outside. All functional elements line the perimeter, freeing the centre and making a small space feel significantly larger than its footprint.
What makes the project worth attention is not complexity but conviction. By balancing transparency and enclosure with this much precision at this small a scale, Ugly Rolls establishes a quiet dialogue between making and selling, between interior activity and the surrounding streetscape. No gimmick, no signature material, no design gesture competing with the product. Just a corner shop that decided openness was enough.
