Hasta La Ideas

Volcanic stone walls feature a geometric pattern of copper-leaf triangles inside this restaurant and nightclub on the banks of the Seine river in Paris (+ slideshow).

Mexico City architects Emmanuel Picault and Ludwig Godfrey collaborated with Paris architect Nicolas Sisto to insert the Nüba nightclub on the upper level of a shopping centre and exhibition hall near Austerlizt station.

The project is inspired by Mexican architecture and materials. “Living in Mexico City for a few years, this project of Nüba brought us back home to Paris through our adopted country Mexico,” said Godfrey and Picault, who both grew up in France.

The trio shipped five tonnes of volcanic stone from Veracruz to Le Havre to build the interior then applied 300 square metres of copper leaf from Santa Clara Del Cobre across the ceiling.

These materials helped to create a dark and shadowy interior with simple undertones of brown, grey and gold, illuminated by low lights and the reflection of the copper-leaf detailing.

The tessellated wall patterns are complemented by triangular cornices. “Simple and sharp geometry is the defining aesthetic of this project, reinforced by the use of the best Mexican handcraft, a tribute to this country,” the architects added.

The space operates as a restaurant during the day, transforming into a concert hall and club at night.

A kitchen and bar area are positioned at the rear of the space, with the restaurant area off to one side. A dancing area with a raised, wooden stage and small backstage area leads out onto a large outdoor bar and terrace.

Small wooden stools are positioned along the front of the bar and grouped together with tables in the restaurant.

Nüba is on top of DOCKS en Seine, a combined exhibition hall, shopping centre, fashion school and restaurant designed by French architects Jakob + Macfarlane. See more images of the building in our previous story »

Picault and Godfrey also completed a textured timber pyramid nightclub in Mexico City.

Other bars and nightclubs we’ve featured include a club and penthouse with chunky black trees, also in Paris, a nightclub in a converted car park near Stockholm and a timber pavilion club on Fire Island, New York. See more bars »

Photography is by Nicolas Sisto.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

Nüba Club

The Franco-Mexicans architects Emmanuel Picault, Ludwig Godefroy and Nicolas Sisto have just completed a new restaurant/club in Paris, called the Nüba. Located on the rooftops of Paris, right in the city centre, in the recently revitalised neighbourhood of gare d’ Austerlizt, the generous 1400sqm space is widely open on the river Seine.

This project is the story of a voyage.The journey of Lionel Bensemoun, owner of Le Baron (Paris, New York, London, Tokyo), with the purpose of giving a party in Mexico City made happened our first encounter with him.Living in Mexico City since a few years, this project of Nüba brought us back home to Paris, through our adopted country, Mexico.

According to the genesis of the project, we decided to flight a project from Mexico to Paris. Using Mexican references and materials, we landed a temple on top of the French capital, a revisited one, fit to host a music consecration.

Simple and sharp geometry is defining the aesthetic of the project, reinforced by the use of the best mexican handcraft, a tribute to this country.

Among all materials, the most significant we shipped were, 5 tons of volcanic stones from Veracruz to Le Havre, as well as 200 sqm of leather from Leon Guanajuato to cover the walls, and 300 sqm of Santa Clara Del Cobre copper leaf for the ceiling.

With the help of our friend and ally, architect Nicolas Sisto, we managed to gather together all the materials in Mexico and rebuild the project in Paris, on the rooftop of the cité de la mode et du design, built by architects Jakob & Macfarlane.

Restaurant during the day, and concert hall and club at night, the space is centred around a large terrace providing a fluent and festive runaround for the clients, passing from one interest spot to another, from the inner bar to the outdoor one, enjoying this way either the outdoor DJ set on the terrace, the one inside or maybe the band playing live music on the stage.

Architecture: Emmanuel Picault (Mexico), Ludwig Godefroy (Mexico), Nicolas Sisto (Paris)
Conceptual team: Lionel Bensemoun, Jean Marie Tassy, Gael Personnaz, Emmanuel Picault, Ludwig Godefroy, Nicolas Sisto
Industrial design: Atelier Antoine Daniel, Emmanuel Picault, Ludwig Godefroy
Advisors: Helena Ich&Kar
Administration in Mexico: Roberto Ayala
Administration in Paris: Alice Stahl
Interior finishing: Aaron Yepez, Jose Luis Madrigal
Construction: Josue Caniah (JRC)

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Godefroy and Nicolas Sisto appeared first on Dezeen.

Upside-down plant pots, bare lightbulbs, exposed ducting and raw materials feature in this São Paulo restaurant by Suite Arquitetos (+ slideshow).

Brazilian studio Suite Arquitetos refurbished a two-storey building in the south of Brazil’s largest city Brazilian capital into a healthy-eating restaurant called Bien!

The architects used a combination of wood, metal, yellow and blue furniture and greenery and intended to create an open-plan dining environment with a raw industrial twist.

Windows wrap around the corner of the ground-floor restaurant facades, allowing the interior materials and fixtures to be seen from the outside. Filipe Troncon of Suite Arquitetos told Dezeen: “We demolished everything, creating a big glass facade to make more natural lighting and communicate with the pedestrians.”

Pine-topped tables, designed by the architects, feature yellow steel legs and look like study desks. Blue chairs and cushions were chosen to add an additional colour to the restaurant and provoke a “sustainable and healthy sensation”.

The walls and pillars are covered with wood panelling and the bar area is lined with steel sheets that compliment exposed air-conditioning ducts overhead.

White plant pots and greenery dangle above the tables, interspersed with exposed bulbs and angled yellow lamps.

A large metal box formed by perforated metal plates houses the first floor and contains a kitchen, storage areas, office and bathrooms.

“The first floor exterior material is a laser perforated metallic plate, that the pedestrians can not see inside, but the cooks and the manager can see out,” Troncon told Dezeen.

Other restaurants we’ve featured recently include a fantasy bar and restaurant that appears to be stitched together with thick black thread, an Italian restaurant in Shanghai with a raw industrial interior and a 1920s style renovation of a Basel bar and brasserie.

See more features from Brazil »
See more restaurants and bars »
See more interior design »

Photography is by Ricardo Bassetti.

Here’s more from the architects:

Bien! restaurant

The architecture of Bien! Restaurant is oriented toward the street and toward the City of São Paulo.

The small two floor building occupies a discrete corner in the middle of itaim, in the capital’s South Zone, and was refurbished to receive a natural food restaurant, opened only during the day, in which the light enhances the colours and emphasises the movements.

The joining of these two factors, light and city, defined for the space and almost industrial, but comfortable, design and contemporary concern for the environment.

Young architects Carolina Mauro, Daniela Frugiuele and Filipe Troncon, from Suite arquitetos, had, as a starting point, the expansion of the possible limit.

In the ground floor a transparent glass box surrounds the area of the dinning-room and gives it continuity while revealing to passerby the raw materialness of the tables, chairs and coatings.

One floor up, a detached metal box, formed by perforated metal plates protects the kitchen’s volume, closets, bathrooms and office, and allow the light and air in without revealing the traditional framework of doors and windows.

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Suite Arquitetos appeared first on Dezeen.

This bakery in Porto by Portuguese architect Paulo Merlini has a wavy ceiling that’s designed to look like a dripping cake topping (+ slideshow).

Paulo Merlini installed the stripy ceiling to fulfil two key functional requirements: reducing glare from the overhead lighting and improving the acoustics inside the bakery.

The wooden panels descend from the ceiling onto two of the walls, where shapes representing an abstracted version of the new logo designed by Merlini for the client become visible from certain angles.

The interior comprises three separate areas with different seating arrangements so customers can choose the environment that best suits their mood.

As well as the ceiling, the colour of the walls was also chosen to reinforce the visual reference to baked goods. “We picked the twenty most wanted products of the bakery and, based on a pattern of global identification, we found a middle tone and applied it on the walls,” says Merlini.

Paulo Merlini has also designed a dentist’s surgery in Porto with a ceiling that resembles a gabled house.

Baking fans will enjoy this bakery in Suffolk, England, with a bird’s nest motif set into the counter and this one in Melbourne, Australia, with undulating wooden slats on the walls and ceiling that resemble a bread basket.

Photography is by João Morgado.

See more cafe interiors »
See more architecture and design in Portugal »

Here’s a project description from the architect:

Before designing this project we visited and analyzed other similar spaces trying to find some errors that could be corrected. We found out that a basic error being committed was that most of these services only had one type of space. This design attitude ignored the variation of mood one feels during the day, or even if he walks there alone or with friends, needs a place to read a book or just wants to socialize.

So, to bridge this flaw, we created three different environments so that the costumer can select the space that fits better to his or her mood, rather than have to adapt itself to an imposing environment. This way we provide a more emphatic place and consequently amplify three times the commercial potential.

But a customer isn’t one till he gets in. How could we get him inside?

In a metropolitan style of life, everyday people deal with millions of inputs, like Billboards, Signs, People, Cars.etc. The way the brain deals with this excessive information is to send most of it to the unconscious mind, releasing the conscious from the excessive information.

As one moves through the city the brain captures the information around and gathers all the similar inputs creating a mental “scenario” that, based on predictability is perceived by the unconscious mind, releasing the conscious to all variable inputs that he experiences outside that scenario. This is a surviving system that we inherited from the savanna era, so that if for example, a predator moved between the trees, without having to consciously capture every bit of information around, one could perceive the movement and react to protect their own life.

Joining to this line of thought the known fact that 70% of those inputs are visual, and that humans as many animals have an attraction to light, we knew that we had to create an input that could distinguish itself from the rest of the city scenario in such a way that it could activate the conscious perception, guaranteeing that people would notice and feel attracted to it. For that we’ve used light as the main attraction.

We studied the approximation of the observer to the space and realized that the most visually relevant plan from the exterior was the ceiling, and so we focused on that.

In our studies we also realized that the use of direct light tends to heat up the space and create shadowed corners turning space into uninviting places and that, in an auditory approach, the excessive noise mainly resulting of the reverberating sound was not being properly solved.

So, to solve these problems we knew we had to break the sound waves and refract the light. And so we did, by creating a second ceiling that results from the repetition of wooden stripes, we found a system that could solve the two problems in a row.

In our research we found studies that prove that the presence of color and forms that are food-like actually makes people hungrier.

So to get that input on the users, we picked the twenty most wanted products of the bakery and, based on a pattern of global identification, we found a middle tone and applied it on the walls.

On the formal approach, we made the ceiling “melt” in some points to make it look like a cake topping.

We also proposed a new logo to the client, and designed the space partially based on it. The wooden stripes descend through two of the walls creating an effect that dialogs directly with the consumer. When one moves through space realises that some hidden forms start to appear on the walls. Those forms are an abstraction of the proposed logo. The intention is to unconsciously reinforce the image of the firm in one’s mind.

We like to think of our interventions as positive manipulation of the human brain. As such we focus on giving positive inputs to all the five senses (when possible) so that we can alter one’s homeostatic level, and as a result make people feel happier.

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by Paulo Merlini appeared first on Dezeen.

Surfaces appear to be stitched together with thick black thread in this fantasy bar and restaurant interior by Polish designer Karina Wiciak.

Szwalnia, which means “sewing room” in Polish, was designed by Karina Wiciak of design studio Wamhouse as the eighth in a twelve-part series of imagined interiors that includes a design based on a slaughterhouse.

“This design was inspired by everything related to tailoring, but applied in a more symbolic manner,” said the designer.

Each overlapping white surface is edged with dashed black lines, giving the impression that parts have been sewn together to form the rooms. This motif is also used on the bar and bases of glass-topped tables.

The space is divided by curtains of blue fabric, which is also hung behind the bar and draped over stairs.

Rows of giant tailor’s pins are stuck into the floor to create banisters and balustrades. Stools and chairs are reminiscent of oversized pin cushions.

Lamps shaped like curtain tassels hang from the ceiling and bobbins are mounted on the walls.

The most recent bars and restaurants we’ve published include 1920s-style brasserie in Basel by Herzog & de Meuron and a Stockholm car park that’s been converted into a diner and nightclub. We also have a dedicated board for eating and drinking venues on Pinterest.

See more restaurant and bar interiors »

Wamhouse sent us the following project description:

Szwalnia is the eighth design from the XII collection

“Szwalnia” (which in Polish means “sewing room”) is a combination of modern design, minimalism, as well as a pinch of magic and fable-like atmosphere.

The background of the interior consists of white walls and floors “sewn” with black thread. Instead of typical partition walls, there are large surfaces of hanging cloth, which also form an untypical facing of the stairs. Enlarged tailor pins serve as characteristic ornaments, while also forming a balustrade, chair backrests, or hocker legs.

Small poufs, which resemble pincushions, also refer to the motif of a sewing room.

This distinctive interior is supplemented by lamps in the shape of curtain tassels, as well as wall ornaments in the form of knobs from an old sewing machine.

The “Szwalnia” design includes lamps called “chwost” (in Polish “tassel”), a “zszyty” table (in Polish “sewn”), as well as a chair, a hocker and a puff called “nabity” (in Polish “spiked”).

About the collection XII

The collection “XII” will consist of 12 thematic interior designs, together with furniture and fittings, which in each part will be interconnected, not only in terms of style, but also by name. Each subsequent design will be created within one month, and the entire collection will take one year to create.

Here, visualization is to constitute more than a design, which is thrown away after implementation of the interior design, but mainly an image, which has a deeper meaning and can function individually, for instance as a print on a wall, or even a CD cover.

These will not be interiors made to a specific order, but designs based on the author’s fantasy and his fascinations of various sorts. It will be possible to order a specific interior design in the form of adaptation of the selected part of the collection, on the basis of exclusivity.

The author’s assumption was not to create trite, fashionable interiors, but non-standard places, full of symbols and metaphors, at the borderline between architecture and scenography.

Due to their nature, these are mostly commercial interiors, intended for use and reception by a larger group of people. Yet, it was not supposed to be an art gallery, in which art is merely watched, but places in which it could be put into use and to do virtually everything – depending on the purpose and function of the premises.

The author of the collection did not strive to artificially ascribe ideology to random ideas, but rather to make the entire design readable and coherent, and at the same time to design every item specifically for the given interior.

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Karina Wiciak appeared first on Dezeen.

Food with edible packaging is served around a circular counter at the WikiBar in Paris by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur.

The cafe is the first in a proposed chain of WikiBars selling an innovative range of WikiPearl foods that are protected by an edible skin. Products in the range include ice creams that don’t melt when touched, yoghurts that can be eaten without a spoon and cheeses that don’t need to be wrapped in foil.

Referencing the molecular structure of the food, Mathieu Lehanneur used a tessellated pattern of hexagons as the motif for the cafe’s interior.

This motif was applied to a mirrored light on the ceiling and a seating area beside the window. The outlines of hexagons also shine through the counter from lighting concealed underneath.

Glass cloches surround a selection of treats on sale, which can also be taken home using simple biodegradable bags to keep them clean. Meanwhile, the story of the brand is displayed across the rear wall.

Harvard professor David Edwards started the WikiFoods company with designer François Azambourg and biologist Don Ingber, after first developing a concept for foods that can survive without protective plastic packaging. Edwards is also the founder of ArtScience Labs and collaborated with Philippe Starck on an aerosol spray that lets users enjoy alcohol without getting drunk.

Another Wikibar is set to open soon in Massachusetts and a series of pop-up and mobile bars are also planned for the near future.

Designer Mathieu Lehanneur has worked on several unusual interior design projects, from an advertising agency with caves made from pulped paper to a room at the Centre Pompidou where teenagers can hang out. See more design by Mathieu Lehanneur.

See more stories about food design on Dezeen, including prototypes for 3D-printed burgers and an edible desk lamp.

Photography is by Michel Giesbrecht.

Here’s a project description from the design team:

Wikibar by Mathieu Lehanneur

Mathieu Lehanneur is responsible for the interior design of the WikiBar, the first of many, that will open its doors at 4 Rue de Bouloi in the 1st district in Paris. A simple as well as radical concept: to offer good and eco-responsible food fighting and addressing the problem of pollution from packaging. This Wiki Food incorporates the natural principle of grapes: a sphere with an edible coating to protect the food. A principle adaptable to drinks, cream and from now onwards ice creams created in collaboration with Philippe Faure, the maestro of ice creams. Ice creams that do not melt in your hand are available in this first WikiBar!

Mathieu Lehanneur has created a decor symbolised by a mirror-light, an illuminating and reflective object formed of hexagons “a geometrical reference to the molecular structure of WikiPearl laminations (). A graphic design and a matter of cookery demonstrations for this revolutionary concept.” A symbol of the approximation of science and design, a logical onward step for the designer who has regularly collaborated with Le Laboratoire since the production of “Andrea,” the air purification system through plants. Mobile WikiBar, pop-up wiki bars are already on the horizon, and the next permanent Wiki Bar will be in the forthcoming Lab Cambridge, currently being designed. The American version of the Parisian Le Laboratoire initiated by David Edwards.

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Mathieu Lehanneur appeared first on Dezeen.