"Kathy Liu and Justin Lan might be the most patient cafe owners in Melbourne. In 2011 the husband and wife duo shoehorned their tiny coffee takeaway in next to a tailoring business. Then they waited. Their landlord wanted to retire and hand over the entire building, but wasn’t quite ready.

It was four years before the couple got the nod, chucked out their old coffee machine, switched the beans from Genovese to Code Black and opened the full incarnation of Two Birds. Today the space riffs on the clean, light lines of Scandinavia, but adds a playroom twist imagined by Dan Korman.

Its steel-framed chairs are powder coated in primary colours. A tentacle-like chandelier hangs over the requisite communal table. Take a close look and you’ll see its many lights are made from old Posca pens......"