Coffee shops being third spaces more than half a thousand years old, starting from coffee shops alongside the Bosphorus in Istanbul in 1400s, before it jumps to Italy via the merchants of Genoa and Venice.

Coffee shop + armchairs you mention is also a time-honoured tradition: the TV show ‘Friends’ is effectively just a camera pinned to that armchair. It’s probably the most famous TV series in the whole western world. People don’t change all that much!