Hasta La Ideas

Japanese architects Maker have completed a Hiroshima restaurant where timber slats on the ceiling descend around the dining tables. 

These vertical batons create privacy screens between tables and corridors at the Kurogane restaurant.

Hanging fabric creates additional screens between individual tables.

Maker also recently completed a hair salon with untreated timber booths and gauze partitions – see our earlier story here.

Photography is by Shigeki Orita.

Here are a few words from Maker:

Kurogane by Maker

Noncommittally, three-dimensionally, ‘Kurogane’, the restaurant of Hiroshima-styled teppan-yaki(dishes on a hot plate), is on the second floor of the building in the city area of Hiroshima.

The owner had wanted to make a restaurant of teppan-yaki familiar with women. We designed the clean natural space with wood based on her wish.

The most characteristic part is wooden louvers. These are used for partitions and the ceiling, and cover the inside of the restaurant.

Their layer and shade make us feel depth and a cubic effect.

Passing an entrance, there is the inside space directed by warming lightings and louvers.

louvered partitions vaguely divide seats and a service lead.

Because of them, visitors can observe visitor’s appearances through them, and give fine quickly service.

Louvers play functional and ornamental role and give a feel of unification.

This design is simple but three-dimensionally, and this restaurant makes good mood pursuing of distance between visitors and staffs.

See also:

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Tree Restaurant by Koichi Takada Architects	Tang Palace by FCJZ	Rosa’s by Gundry & Ducker

Charred larch clads the curved walls of a seafood restaurant that projects towards the harbour in Folkestone, England.

Rocksalt Restaurant by British studio Guy Hollaway Architects sits atop a new sea wall beside a historic brick viaduct and is shielded from stray boats by a screen of timber columns.

A cantilevered balcony with a glass balustrade wraps around the sea-facing facade of the restaurant, sheltered by a canopy.

The building is raised on a stepped slate plinth to protect it from flooding.

Locally caught fish will be served inside the restaurant, where lamps designed to look like lobster cages hang above circular tables and leather seating booths.

This is the first completed building from architect Terry Farrell‘s seafront masterplan.

Another popular seafront restaurant on Dezeen is located in a remote forested gorge in southern China – see all our stories about restaurants here.

Photography is by Paul Freeman.

Here are some more details from the architects:

Rocksalt Seafood Restaurant Folkestone Harbour, Kent

Rocksalt Restaurant and Bar is a newly built destination restaurant in Folkestone Harbour and is the first restaurant venture for executive chef Mark Sargeant, former head chef at Gordon Ramsay’s Claridge’s.

Won at national competition by Guy Hollaway Architects, it is the first complete building to be realized as part of Sir Terry Farrell’s Folkestone masterplan. The completed restaurant and bar forms a crucial milestone in the regeneration of Folkestone’s ‘Old Town’ and harbour, serving to reconnect visitors and the population of the coastal town with the working harbour and seafront. The restaurant is located on Folkestone’s harbour edge, adjacent to its working slipway where local fishermen unload their catch, delivering fresh fish to the restaurant daily. It is hoped that the project will catalyse the ‘Padstow effect’.

Perched in the corner of the tidal harbour between a listed brick viaduct and cobbled street, the restaurant faces the former fish market. Folkestone boasts a small fishing fleet who off-load catches on to the slipway directly adjacent to the restaurant. The building sits on a new curved sea wall and borrows back land to form a wine cellar. Timber dolphin piles protect the building from stray boats.

On approach, the building presents itself from under a brick arch and then peels away from the cobbled street to reveal the harbour. Three curved walls, decreasing in height are clad in shot blasted black larch to echo the surrounding context. A slate plinth raises the building from the flood risk zone and elevates the views. Angled reveals on picture windows allow sight into the kitchen, reflecting the working nature of the fish market, and offer views back to the street. The slate steps leading to the entrance merge into public bench seating at the top of the jetty facing out to sea.

At ground floor level, the restaurant has 86 covers and the opportunity for a private dining room. Large glass sliding doors allow uninterrupted panoramic views of fishing boats at high tide and sandy shingle flats at low tide. From the restaurant’s interior a cantilevered balcony, with a glass balustrade and curved soffit creates an extension of the internal dining area.

Liz Jeanes, interior designer at Guy Hollaway Architects led the interior scheme, taking strong influences from the immediate context. The interior colours emulate colours of the sea and sky – rising from dark, aquatic greens and dark tones of timber at ground floor; rising to a lighter palette of blues, greys and whites, contrasting with warmer shades of iroko on the first floor bar and terrace. A marble top to the ground floor bar and marble floor tiles show influences from traditional fishmonger interiors, whilst the main restaurant uses herringbone laid oak parquet flooring to emulate the scales of a fish.

Tall backed leather booth seats sit beneath the low curved ceiling, enveloping diners into the restaurant. The curved ceiling then extends from the restaurant back wall, opening out to the sea and is designed to reflect the smooth curved form of a fish’s side. Dark stained larch panelling at ground floor level echo the exterior envelope treatment, and including concealed acoustic insulation between slats within the busy restaurant.

Hidden LED strips wash light across ceilings and down walls, providing a subtle radiance to the interior spaces. Feature pendants are reminiscent of lobster pots and accentuate the bar and central table on the ground floor.

The building directly engages with the harbour – at ground floor, three large sliding doors blur inside and outside, and at first floor large sliding doors open fully to merge the bar and external terrace seamlessly. Beyond the pebble filled roof elevated views of the harbour and to the English Channel beyond are offered.

The completed building sees its concept realised by re-engaging visitors and local residents alike with Folkestone’s rich coastal heritage, serving as a catalyst to revitalise the local area.

Client: Folkestone Harbour Company
Date: June 2010 – June 2011
Contract Value: £2.3m

See also:

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Pollen Street Social by Neri&Hu (NHDRO)	Tree Restaurant by Koichi Takada Architects	Living Lab by Ab Rogers for Pizza Express

Twisted bricks create openings in the walls of a speakeasy-style bar in Bangkok, allowing passers-by a sneaky glimpse inside.

Thai architects Studiomake designed the bar, where cigars for sale are showcased inside a glass-fronted enclosure.

Storage closets are made from dark-stained teak, shelves are affixed to the wall by black steel brackets and chairs are finished in black leather.

The bar is named Dude Cigar Bar to assert that men are the targeted patrons.

A similar recent project on Dezeen is a former slaughterhouse with walls of stacked roof tiles – see the project here.

Photography is by Nantiya Bussabong.

Here are some more details from Studiomake:

Dude Cigar Bar by Studiomake

Dude Cigar Bar maintains an uneasy relationship with its neighbours. Located next door to a busy Au Bon Pain and meters away from a brightly lit Boots pharmacy, there is plenty of context worth ignoring. In a very public, somewhat unlikely location we sought to create the exclusive feel of a speakeasy without being exclusionary.

The front brick wall attempts to balance this task by presenting an imposing solid front, however it features a surface treatment that begs for closer inspection. Select bricks rotate in plan to allow a peak inside; a humidor is revealed, and glimpses of dark teak, hound’s tooth cloth and black leather start to reveal the nature of the place.

The name refers not only to the character of its clientele but is also a play on the Thai word ดูด. “Duut” means to suck, on an object, and here we are specifically talking about cigars. Once the brick wall draws you over and invites you around the corner, you are presented with a direct view to the humidor. Come on in and check out our Habanos.

Inside the manly materials abound—wrinkle black powder coated steel brackets affix the shelves to the wall, support the long bench, and form the base of the small tables. The Dude logo delights in its manly iconography as it flexes and gloats from the furniture and hardware. The place is tiny, and that suits the owner just fine, he wanted a place to hang out with his friends, and if you want to come in and have a whisky or a cigar, then cool.

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Warehouse 8B by Arturo Franco Office	Slowpoke Cafe by Sasufi	D’espresso by Nemaworkshop

Milanese collective Carnovsky have decked out east London bar and gallery DreamBags-JaguarShoes in their wallpaper that changes under different lighting conditions.

Called RGB, the papers are printed in red, green, blue and yellow to reveal different layers of imagery when viewed with coloured lighting.

Big game emerge from the undergrowth in red lighting, monkeys in blue lighting and a jungle of plants in green lighting.

A series of limited edition prints is also on show.

DreamBags-JaguarShoes is named after the two shops that occupied the space in the 1980s. The same signs still hang on the shop front.

The exhibition continues until 21 September.

Here are some more details from Carnovsky:

RGB by Carnovsky at DreamBags-JaguarShoes

RGB is a work about the exploration of the “surface’s deepness”.

RGB designs create surfaces that mutate and interact with different chromatic stimulus.

RGB’s technique consists in the overlapping of three different images, each one in a primary color.

The resulting images from this three level’s superimposition are unexpected and disorienting.

The colors mix up, the lines and shapes entwine becoming oneiric and not completely clear.

Through a colored filter (a light or a transparent material) it is possible to see clearly the layers in which the image is composed.

The filter’s colors are red, green and blue, each one of them serves to reveal one of the three levels.

In each image three layers live together, three worlds that could belong to a specific animal kingdom or to an anatomical part, but at the same time connect to a different psychological or emotional status that passes from the clear to the hidden, from the light to the darkness, from the awakeness to the dream in something that could be a sort of exploration of the surface’s deepness.

We have always wanted to explore the concept of “Jungle” or really tangled, intricate and dense tropical forest, and for the exhibition at DreamBags-JaguarShoes we have created some new pieces, new wallpapers and new limited edition prints about this idea.

The jungle subject, with its exuberant, twisted and redundant vegetation that hides bizarre creatures, lends us to the exploration of another theme: the night.

For the first time in fact we are presenting some pieces from a new series that represents an evolution of our RGB project: RGB – The black series.

They follow the same original RGB principles but inverted, so it works over a black background and, looking through the filters, lights or transparent materials in the three colors, the worlds appear on negative.

The space at DreamBags-JaguarShoes that was already divided in two, gave us the idea to divide the installation in two parts, one white and one black, as if they were the day and the night.

Through a green filter or light it is possible to see the jungle clearly, and through a red all the jungle animals appear, well, not all of them, the blue filter makes an entire guffawing monkey’s tribe emerge embroiling with the other creatures behind the dense vegetation.

Carnovsky is a Milan based artist/designer duo comprised of Francesco Rugi and Silvia Quintanilla

28th July – 21st September 2011

DreamBags-JaguarShoes
32-34 Kingsland Road, Shoreditch,
London E2 8DA

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D’espresso by Nemaworkshop	Mocha Mojo by Mancini Enterprises	Restaurant at the Royal Academy by Tom Dixon

Raw concrete and rough limestone clad the interior of a London ice cream parlour designed by branding studio Vonsung.

Located inside a historic building in Fitzroy Square, the gelato shop is filled with bulbous black sofas and cylindrical white stools.

Ice cream packaging and signage were also designed using a monochrome palette.

The only colours to be found in the shop are inside the ice cream cabinet.

This is the second story on Dezeen this week about an ice cream shop in London, following an Italian gelato stall that evokes the seaside – see all our stories about ice cream parlours.

Here are some more details from Vonsung:

Polka Gelato

Vonsung recently completed the total identity design for Polka Gelato, from naming, identity, branding, signage, website to spatial design. Based in a conservation area, Fitzroy Square, Polka Gelato opens its doors to showcase their artisanal way of creating ice cream. Despite all the talk of a double-dip recession in the UK, the client’s wish was to offer something enlightening, from old to young, a sense of affordable luxury amid these difficult times.

The ambition of the new ice cream brand was to open a gelato store sourced only from the finest ingredients of precious, exotic fruits, herbs, spices and flavors. The vision was to bring the age-old history of Italian gelato to London, while a recent trip to New York sparked a new revolutionary thought – the gelato popsicle. To realize this vision, London’s design studio, Vonsung, was invited to work on the dream.

The character of the listed building situated near the Fitzroy Square, is clearly that of a London period building. The dilemma was how to avoid the ice cream parlour formula of pop-culture, primary colours interior decoration, without making a disconnected piece of modern design that clashes with the building’s original identity.

An early decision was to place the Polka’s colourful, beautifully crafted gelatos as the central focal point and make the surrounding interior resemble the sculpted nature of the hand-made gelato.

The concept of the store plays with the complementary characteristics and the related dichotomy between male and female; child and adult; night and day. This is reflected in the design through the formal language and tactile quality of the finish materials used. The surrounding interior is unified with a single colour used on all surfaces.

Housed inside a concrete/limestone mix surrounding, the furniture piece on the floor is designed as a strong, masculine and dynamic form whilst the lighting enunciates femininity to create more fluid contour lines. The store is designed in a more playful manner creating different zones that maintain the perspective view between them.

Joseph Sung (Creative Director Vonsung) has strived in his precedent projects to experiment variant ways to explore materials. Among the natural, old, and time-proven material, Sung has derived at lime concrete for this project. Being situated in a historical setting, Sung felt that juxtaposing old and new material would give expected meaning for both, as exemplified using external architectural material within the interior space of the gelato store.

Stemming from the client brief, Sung identified with the key word, ‘artisan’, and made every effort to not to allow the solid masses of concrete material to feel uncomfortable for the visitors, but feel a sense of skill, artistry of the space. The boundaries of the interior wall and ceiling were made to be permeable as possible by way of shadow gaps and openings. Also, to reduce the monolithic manner of concrete, Sung mixed limestone into the batch and applied a smooth finish to the raw concrete.

The result was an interior space, which kindles the feeling of being an insider in an environment; simply put, it recognises what may feel like being within a creamy gelato batch. By adopting this method of design, Sung drew the attention to the timeliness of the space and architecture. All faculties of perception and senses, particularly tactility, facilitate the customer experience.

Known for increasingly severe minimalism, this project is Sung’s latest interpretation of totality of branding design, however restrained and serene but rich in texture and delicate modulated light. With the aim of creating a space that will age better with time, our design creates a circular passage allowing the customer to experience the space in multiple ways and interpretations.

Furniture staged in key points throughout the store creates the spatial concept using a small space changing to an open condition.

Looking from the outside, the interior resembles a tale of a spaceship landed on the moon. If you taste a scoop of Polka Gelato, you may well think you are (over) the moon.

Completed: August 2011
Design: Joseph Sung (Vonsung)
Design Assistants: Jing Chen, Teresa Wong
Branding: Michiko Ito (Vonsung)

Contractor: MKM Contracts
Lighting: iGuzzini
Carpentry: Valchromat
Furniture: Modus, HAY

Click above for larger image

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Dri Dri by Elips Design	Snog frozen yogurt by Cinimod Studio	Leggenada Ice Cream by SO Architecture