“It’s not quite nostalgic, not quite futuristic,” says CTRL Space director Chris Stevens of Mother, the all-day cafe and soon-to-be wine bar which opened recently in Grey Lynn, Tāmaki Makaurau. “It’s something in between.”

CTRL Space worked closely with co-owner Hugo Baird to bring his vision to life: it’s their third collaboration  after Lilian – just up the road in the same strip of shops – and Hotel Ponsonby. (For Mother, Baird has teamed up with Willy Gresson, and pastry chef Petra Galler.)

There’s a shared kind of DNA to the projects: restful tones, a sense of age, materials that wear nicely. “But this one feels different,” says Stevens. “Sharper in tone. More distilled in form.”

It’s not a big space – it is, in fact, exactly half of the former Harvest Wholefoods, which occupied the site for decades before it was bought by Huckleberry, which folded last year. In this space, 15 staff make everything from scratch, working between a large kitchen behind the glass window, and progressing out to the dining space with an open bar. “What the customer sees is clarity,” says Stevens. “What’s behind it is a controlled kind of chaos – and that’s by design. The closer you look, the more there is to see.”

The design delights in a tension between materials. “Familiar but new, structured but slow,” says Stevens. “Design that feels both mechanical and handmade.” There is plenty of roughly handmade terracotta tiling, but the key is stainless steel, which appears as shelves behind the bar, and in light fittings and a long leaner through the middle of the space, softened with custom plywood stools. The steel glows softly: it feels organic here, rather than hard. There’s walnut panelling, and butter-yellow laminate tables with a stainless-steel band. The walls are a yellow-beige and there is lots of dark wood. The main bar carries a beautifully old-fashioned slab of red-veined marble.

During the day, it’s coffee and pastries, including a pecan bun slathered with butterscotch sauce that has Auckland’s social feeds abuzz, and by night it will soon progress to a softly lit wine bar. It’s easy to see why it’s been immediately popular, but Stevens hopes the smaller details keep people coming back. “Every junction, join and material change at Mother was considered,” he says, “not just for how it looks, but how it feels, functions and fits.”

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