Mozaika Cafe, Kyiv | Ukraine | Yova Yager Design

A lot of things are interwoven in the interior design of a new Kyiv-based café - Make my Cake:
the owners’ love for adventures and the designers’ courage, Odessa and Kyiv, statics and
dynamics, sweet and salty macaron cakes which is the café’s specialty.
Yova Yager, the designer of Make my Cake interior space, skillfully juggles with various trends:
gold, fashionable shades of pink, velvet and fringe, without forgetting the main thing, which is
the sense of taste. As a true foodie, she believes that every person needs to develop their taste
buds constantly trying some new food. This idea of taste buds is further developed in the interior
in the form of patters on chairs, brass lamps, and the macaron cakes that also resemble them,
don’t they? Anyway, let’s tell the whole story from the beginning.
The place where Make my Cake is now situated used to be an office. There was no need for total
replanning, but certain alterations were surely necessary. As a result, the space with the total area
of 50 m2, was divided into two halls with the seating capacity of 14 people. The white color was
chosen as the background – a pure canvas that can tolerate all kinds of stylistic experiments.
However, while stripping the walls off the layers of paint inherited from the previous occupants,
the designers revealed concrete structures and local yellow brick typical of Kyiv, and they
decided to keep them exposed. The concrete walls also remained. After all, background is never
the most important element in any interior design. In Make my Cake café, they key part is played
by the golden bar counter. In contrast to a bourgeois bar, the designer chose collapsible director’s
chairs decorated with prints created by Masha Reva*. The bar counter is a solid monolithic
element, whereas the chairs are movable and flexible. The former resembles the pompous Kyiv,
where the latter refer to the ironic Odessa.
The interior has more to do with Odessa than it might seem at first sight. It is not only about the
brand itself which originates from Odessa. Masha Reva, the artist, also comes from Odessa,
although she has been living in Kyiv for a long time. Chairs with her prints are not the only
element in Make my Cake created by Masha Reva. Her pictures are displayed on the walls of the
café. For example, a picture turned upside down featuring a girl who is watching the visitors
from under her thick eyebrows is located right opposite the bar counter. Striped matrasses are yet
another graphic accent that reminds us of beach holidays on the Black sea coast. The designer
says, “When we think of Odessa, the first thing that comes to mind is humor and some peculiar
sense of homeliness. That is why we introduced certain elements, such as a lampshade with a
fringe- the one you may find at the place of an old Jewish granny. Or a sun-shaped mirror, a
handmade object manufactured by Ukrainian craftsmen.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Director’s chairs with the print designed by Masha Reva are part of the project “12x12x12”,
which was devoted to Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker who was illegally convicted for

political reasons. In 2015 twelve Ukrainian designers developed their own versions of the
classical director’s chair. They were displayed in Prostir 86 exhibition space. On the final day of
the exhibition a chair with the word Freedom on it was sold at an auction, and the money was
given to the filmmaker’s family.