The Line – Second Floor Café HQ

Nineteen years ago, a lamp almost did not survive the budget meeting.

The founder kept it anyway — because to him, what stays with people is never only the taste of food.

Today, that lamp becomes the opening scene of The Line — the Taipei headquarters of Second Floor Café, where workplace, exhibitions, and brand narrative unfold as one continuous experience.

A red line runs from the entrance through the space. In Eastern culture, the red thread symbolizes unseen bonds between people. Here, it becomes both navigation and narrative — guiding movement while linking memories, rituals, and everyday encounters.

Visitors move through the headquarters as if passing through chapters of time. The past appears in archived objects - a lamp, a tile, a vintage screen still running games no one ever removed. The present unfolds in the noise of morning meetings and the silence of concentrated work. The future takes shape inside an egg-shaped room.

At the centre of the workplace, meeting rooms inspired by the form of eggshells reference one of the café’s essential ingredients, with thousands of eggs consumed across its kitchens each day. Conceived as spaces of incubation, they host product development, discussion, and decision-making beneath a suspended luminaire whose looping form recalls strands of noodles - another quiet reference to the brand’s culinary identity.

A single column holds two eras at once — its surface clad in Taiwanese mosaic tiles and New York subway bricks, carrying the visual memory of Second Floor's earliest spaces. Beside it, the communal table continues the conversation those spaces began.

Throughout the workplace, spaces for pets, movement, informal pause, and spontaneous interaction are embedded directly into daily routines. A giant WOOF bowl seat welcomes both employees and animals, while yoga corners and retro gaming screens encourage decompression. Here, company culture is not written on walls. It is rehearsed through use.

Rather than presenting a fixed corporate image, The Line is designed as a workplace that continues to evolve through everyday use. Here, memories accumulate, everyday use rewrites the space. The story does not end. It continues along the line.