Hasta La Ideas

Chinese studio Neri&Hu has unmasked the I-beams structure of the oldest steel-framed building in Shanghai to create an Italian restaurant with a raw industrial interior (+ slideshow).

Neri&Hu stripped the inside of the space, leaving exposed brickwork, peeling plaster and Victorian ceilings mouldings intact. The architects then added steel-framed partitions to create a drinks bar, a pizza bar and a series of private dining rooms.

“Stripping back the strata of finishes that have built up after years of renovations, the design concept celebrates the beauty of the bare structural elements,” say the architects.

The main dining area is loosely modelled on a traditional marketplace, which inspired the name Mercato. The two bars are located at the centre and feature industrial steel shelving and reclaimed timber canopies, while glass lamps hang over tables like street lights.

Banquette seating runs through one section of the restaurant, which the architects built using wood found onsite and tubular steel frames.

The three private dining rooms are surrounded by an amalgamation of materials that includes antique mirrors, blackboards, metal mesh, recycled wood, raw steel and textured glass.

“Constantly playing the new against the old, [our] design is a reflection of the complex identity of not only the historical Bund, but of Shanghai at large,” says the studio.

The entrance to the restaurant is a sliding metal gate with words spelled out between its horizontal bars.

Mercato is one of six restaurants at Three on the Bund, a department store along the river in central Shanghai, and it is run by French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

Architects Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu have worked on several renovation projects in Shanghai, including a design gallery in a former colonial police station and the reworking of a 1930s townhouse. Speaking to Dezeen last year, the pair explained that interest in conservation and small scale development is growing in China.

The studio also won World Interior of the Year in 2011 for transforming a disused Japanese army headquarters into a hotel in the same neighbourhood.

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Photography is by Pedro Pegenaute.

Here’s some more text from Neri&Hu

Mercato at Three on the Bund

Neri&Hu puts the “industrial” back in three Michelin star dining and refined interior at Mercato.

Situated within the prestigious Three on the Bund, Mercato is renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s newest culinary destination in Shanghai, the first of which to serve up an upscale yet rustic Italian fare. Neri&Hu’s design for the 1,000 square metre restaurant draws not only from the chef’s culinary vision but also from the rich historical context of its locale, harkening to early 1900s Shanghai, when the Bund was a bustling industrial hub.

Stripping back the strata of finishes that have built up after years of renovations, the design concept celebrates the beauty of the bare structural elements. Three on the Bund was the first building in Shanghai to be built out of steel, and the architects’ decision to reveal the original steel columns pays homage to this extraordinary feat. Against the textured backdrop of the existing brickwork, concrete, plaster and mouldings, new insertions are clearly demarcated. Constantly playing the new against the old, Neri&Hu’s design is a reflection of the complex identity of not only the historical Bund, but of Shanghai at large.

Coming off the lift, one notices immediately the Victorian plaster ceilings above, its gorgeous aged patina juxtaposed against raw steel insertions: a series of lockers along the wall, a sliding metal gate threshold, and the suspended rail from which a collection of eclectic glass bulbs hang—the opulence of old Shanghai coinciding with a grittier side.

Making reference to the restaurant’s name, the vibrant atmosphere inside the main dining space recalls a street side marketplace, featuring at its centre the Bar and the Pizza Bar, both encased in steel mesh and wire glass boxes with recycled wood canopies. Above, a network of tube steel members, inspired by old-time butcher’s rails, intertwine with the exposed ductwork and form a system for hanging both shelving and lighting. Like a deconstructed sofa, the banquettes along the edge of the dining area are made from wood salvaged on site and embedded into a metal frame.

The private dining rooms are also featured in the space as metal-framed enclosures, infilled with panels of varying materials: reclaimed wood, natural steel, antique mirror, metal mesh and chalk board. A band of textured glass along the top edge of each PDR affords some transparency, while sliding doors between each room provide maximum flexibility. This language continues into the corridor between the kitchen and dining area, where a back lit wall of textured glass panels – inspired by old warehouse windows – encourages interaction between the chef and his patrons.

Diners seated along the edges of the room experience a different sort of ambiance. To bring lightness into the space, the perimeter represents an in-between zone: between interior and exterior, between architecture and landscape, between the domestic and the urban. Clad in white travertine, the walls here act as a temporary departure from the other rich textures and palettes. The focus here is simply the breathtaking views of the Bund beyond, drawing the far reaches of the city into the dining space itself.

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by Neri&Hu appeared first on Dezeen.

Colourful strings are threaded around looms to envelop this Barcelona restaurant headed by Catalan chef Ferran Adrià (+ slideshow).

Local studio El Equipo Creativo reinterpreted traditional wooden Peruvian cloth-weaving equipment to create angled panels from thick threads stretched across wooden frames. Some of the frames are twined with white cords to contrast with the colourful sections.

The panels pass over the heads of diners who are served a fusion of Peruvian and Japanese cuisine at Patka, which means “union” in Peru.

A grid of wooden batons creates shelves above a bar at the front of the space, which serves sake and pisco – local tipples in Japan and Peru respectively.

This grid sits against the window at the front of the long narrow building, allowing bottles and crockery to be displayed.

In the main restaurant, a sushi bar separated into chunky units is surrounded by wooden dining surfaces lit with spotlights, while light bulbs dangle above more tables flanked by red seats.

Located just off the Avinguda Parallel, close to Montjuic Park, the restaurant opened as joint venture between chefs Ferran Adrià and his brother Albert, and owners the Iglesias brothers.

Dezeen published a travelling pavilion designed for Adrià’s gastronomic research initiative elBulli Foundation last year.

We’ve featured a couple of restaurant interiors recently, such as a London pizza bar decorated with colourful tiles and an eatery in a converted car park near Stockholm.

More designs in the Catalan capital include a renovated apartment with restored mosaic floors and a laundrette that looks like a nightclub.

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El Equipo Creativo sent us the following information:

Design of Pakta Restaurant, Calle Lleida, Barcelona

After the success of the restaurant Tickets and the cocktail lounge 41º, the tandem formed by Albert and Ferran Adria and the Iglesias bothers has once again counted on El Equipo Creativo to design their latest gastronomic project: Pakta Restaurant. A small locale was chosen in the same area close to the Avenida Paralelo in Barcelona, on the slope going up towards the Mercat de la Flors and Montjuic Park. The novelty is in the gastronomic offer, based on the nikkei Peruvian – Japanese cuisine and, of course, the design of the space, which, as in previous projects by Oliver Franz Schmidt and Natali Canas del Pozo, is a reflection of the gastronomic concept.

Concept

In the Quechua language of Peru Pakta means “union”; in this case the union of two cultures and their respective cuisines . The interior design created by El Equipo Creativo emerges from this same idea, considering that Japanese cuisine is the basis of the nikkei gastronomy but wrapped in Peruvian tastes, colours, traditions and ingredients. With this in mind, the basic elements of the restaurant such as the bars, the kitchen and the furniture are designed with a clear reference to the architecture of the traditional Japanese taverns.
An explosion of colours evocative of Peru envelopes the space. This chromatic “second skin” is achieved by use of a direct reference to the Peruvian loom, offering a surprising combination of colours which contrast with the austere Japanese design, and underlining the deep-rootedness of this artefact in Peruvian arts and crafts.

However, the re-interpretation of the Peruvian loom goes further, sequencing its own elaboration process on the walls of Pakta, transforming this flat surface to offer a tridimensional character to the space, adding vitality and movement and blurring the limits which mark the locale. The traditional Peruvian weaving looms are wooden mechanisms where colored threads intertwine in various directions, forming a suggestive tridimensional space which generates an attractive atmosphere transformed and reinterpreted in Pakta.
The final result unites the re-interpretation of these two cultures–Peruvian and Japanese– by means of some of their most emblematic traditional elements, creating a visually potent but balanced solution, at once spontaneous and rational, hilarious and silent, surprising but strangely familiar, as is the nikkei cuisine itself.

Space and Distribution

As the small locale is long and narrow with a tiny facade, from the beginning of the project it is clear that maximum advantage must be taken of the space. The work areas are divided into three zones:

In the entrance, the sake and pisco bar also acts as a filter between the interior and exterior of the locale. It is a three dimensional framework which serves as a shelf, visual filter and product display stand. Facing outside, the bar becomes the facade and welcomes guests with a composition of faded colours, Japanese lamps, graphics elements and a small selection of products on display. In order to enter the restaurant, the guest passes through the wooden framework, as an introduction to the dining space.

Presiding the dining area is the sushi bar. Structurally speaking, it is completely antagonistic to the sake and pisco bar as it is composed of three heavy, luminous stone pieces, upon which the sushimen work slowly but surely serving directly to the clients who sit around them. The idea of dividing the bar into three separate and elevated “stones” helps to contain the reduced scale of the locale and create a sense of strange levity among the heavy pieces.

Closing the space at the end of the dining area is the kitchen, conceived as a luminous box which allows the cooks inside to be observed through a layer of glass panels with different degrees of transparency.

Technical details

Lighting

The lighting is achieved in collaboration with the BMLD Lighting Design. The main objective is to create an atmosphere which will put the focus on the served dish and the food. The cultural impact of the Peruvian – Japanese restaurant is what determines the lighting concept: fusion of light and dark, simplicity and colour.

The concept is evident by using dim light in some of the looms, thereby creating rhythm and dynamism. It is a game of rationalism, shine and transparency, important concepts in the Japanese culture, as reflected in the sensual lamps on each table and the lanterns which mingle with the three dimensional framework at the entrance. The result reveals a balance between light and atmosphere, where the client is submerged in a new gastronomic experience.

The Looms

The looms envelope the entire dining area by means of three different transversal sections which repeat themselves, varying their tonality and creating a rhythm of variable colour. A few longitudinal pieces placed in different positions and at varying heights help to weave the space and create a sense of enclosure.

The colored looms are designed one by one, intercalating full spaces and empty ones, areas of great chromatic intensity with other more neutral shades, warm colores (reds, golds) with cooler tones (greens and browns). The cloth used on the looms is cotton of hand-made appearance, rough touch and dull finish. In contrast to the profusion of colour, the loom is white and is constructed in a fine, shiny material, thereby becoming a light-reflector.

The structure of the looms is a double wooden frame. The woven cloth revolves around the interior frame, which is joined to the exterior frame by a tensor which permits the threads on the loom to be tensed whenever necessary.

The Finishes

For Pakta, El Equipo Creativo considered it essential to maintain the purity of nature so present in both the Japanese and Peruvian cultures. Therefore, only natural finishes with a minimal transformation from their original state were used.

The wood used in the bars and tables is American oak in which small imperfections and knots are left untouched converting them in differentiating elements which add personality to the pieces. Likewise, the sushi bars built in marble from Novelda, intentionally have a crude, unpolished finish with cracks and streaks that are reminiscent of those pieces taken from a quarry.

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El Equipo Creativo appeared first on Dezeen.

German artist Tobias Rehberger has created a temporary replica of his favourite Frankfurt bar in a New York hotel and covered the entire thing in bold geometric stripes (+ slideshow).

New York Bar Oppenheimer has exactly the same size and proportions of the original Bar Oppenheimer, a regular hangout for the artistic community in Frankfurt. It contains the same furniture and details, from the lighting fixtures to the tall radiators.

Unlike the original, Rehberger has decorated every surface of the replica bar with black and white stripes, which zigzag in every direction and are interspersed with flashes of red and orange.

The patterns are based on the concept of “dazzle camouflage”, a tactic employed during World War I to make it difficult for soldiers to pinpoint a target.

New York Bar Oppenheimer opened last week at Hôtel Americano, coinciding with the annual Frieze New York art fair. Functioning as both an installation and a working bar, it will remain in place until 14 July.

“The way I look at it is like a suitcase,” Rehberger told Wallpaper magazine. “I’m going to be in New York for a bit so I’m able to pack up my favourite bar and take it with me. And because I’m there for the art fair, the bar has to come dressed as a work of art.”

Other monochrome interiors featured on Dezeen include a house-shaped cultural centre and a series of fashion boutiques designed by Zaha Hadid. See more black and white interiors.

See more bars on Dezeen, including one made from scrap materials.

Here’s some more information from the exhibition organisers:

Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer

Pilar Corrias, London and Hôtel Americano are pleased to announce a new sculptural artwork, Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer by the German artist Tobias Rehberger. Presented from 11 May until 14 July 2013, the piece opened to coincide with Frieze New York and is on view at Hôtel Americano.

Rehberger creates objects, sculptures and environments as diverse as they are prolific. Drawing on a repertoire of quotidian objects appropriated from everyday mass-culture, Rehberger translates, alters and expands ordinary situations and objects with which we are familiar. It is in this spirit that Rehberger has created a ‘second edition’ of Bar Oppenheimer, the Frankfurt late-night hangout he frequents and which is at the heart of the city’s artistic community. The work is a sculpture and, at the same time, a fully functioning bar. Rehberger remains faithful to the essence of the original bar: dimensions of space and objects are replicated and re-imagined to produce a familiar yet unfamiliar environment. Vodka Steins, Rehberger’s own favourite drink, are seconded to New York, transporting the artist’s own Frankfurt Oppenheimer Bar experience to Hôtel Americano for two months only.

A place where creatives and thinkers meet to form, discuss, argue, and pursue ideas and follies late into the night, Bar Oppenheimer acts as a catalyst for change. Repatriated in New York as Tobias Rehberger Bar Oppenheimer, the artist is curious as to the effect that its influence will have on a new audience.

11 May – 14 July 2013
Tues – Sat 5pm – midnight
Hôtel Americano, 518 W. 27th Street, New York

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by Tobias Rehberger appeared first on Dezeen.

Patterns of colourful tiles line the walls and counters of this north-east London pizza bar by architects Gundry & Ducker (+ slideshow).

“We wanted to see what we could do with the 150-millimetre square-format tiles” Christian Ducker told Dezeen. “Our medley of references included graphics from New York in the 1950s and 1980s.”

The tiles spell out “pizza” in large letters along the wall running from outside the restaurant parallel to the serving counter, though the top of the word is cut off by the ceiling.

Dark blue tiles cover the surfaces and seats along the same wall, while columns and beams are wrapped in yellow and red.

The late night pizza slice bar was converted from a nightclub so the architects had to start from scratch in the space.

“We completely gutted the whole place, took out all the flooring and built in a slope at the entrance,” said Ducker. “The space is all tiled at the front, and they gradually fade towards the back where there are just a few clusters left.”

“We left some exposed brickwork because we wanted the one-tile-thick insertion to be noticeable,” he added.

The tiles extend out and around the building’s entrance, branded with a red neon sign by graphic designers Studio Partyline.

Voodoo Ray’s is named after a 1988 acid house track by UK artist A Guy Called Gerald, who switched on the sign at the restaurant’s opening party.

Gundry & Ducker‘s other projects in London include a sushi restaurant in Soho and a blackened larch house extension south of the city.

Photography is by Hufton + Crow.

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Here some further details from the architects:

Voodoo Rays is a late night pizza slice shop and restaurant in Dalston East London.

The design is intended to sit within, and celebrate its location on Kingsland High Street, a typical inner London high street strip with its ad-hoc signs and frontages. Its neon signage and brightly light interior is intended to be part of the nighttime street scene.

The design of all surfaces is formed predominately from coloured  6″ ceramic tiles. We wanted to form the interior as a sequence of volumes, reducing in scale and density to reveal the original building interior as you move towards the back of the shop. Each element is expressed in a different colour, the larger elements incorporating giant abstracted text.

A long pizza counter runs the length of the shop and projects beyond the shop frontage, which is recessed, so that the counter feels like part of the street. A hidden door leads to a basement club.

The design is intended to have multiple references taken from both East London and New York, and from between the 1950s -1980s. The references range from launderettes to pie shops, to seaside amusement arcades all of which are reinterpreted with a cartoon sensibility.

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Gundry & Ducker appeared first on Dezeen.

Lighting projectors and cables hang from the spindly branches of chunky black trees inside this penthouse bar and nightclub in Paris by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur (+ slideshow).

Named Electric, the music venue features soundproofed music rooms, an outdoor terrace and a dance floor facing out over the city skyline.

Mathieu Lehanneur collaborated with architect Ana Moussinet to design the interior and added split levels to define different zones.

By day, sofas and trunk-shaped stools can be dotted around the space to form lounge seating areas. By night, these are stored away to open up a ballroom with a rippled DJ booth.

Faceted windows and diagonal panels give texture to the walls in one of the spaces. Others can be used as screens for lighting and video projections.

Mathieu Lehanneur launched his industrial design and interiors studio in 2001. Other interiors he’s designed include a renovation of a Romanesque church in France and an office filled with pulped paper caves. See more design by Mathieu Lehanneur.

Trees have featured in a few interiors recently. See a few more in our recent feature all about indoor forests.

Daytime photography is by Felipe Ribon and night photography is by Fred Fiol.

Here’s some more information from the design team:

Electric by Mathieu Lehanneur

“If Alice in Wonderland had liked rock this is where she would have spent her days and nights…” summarised Mathieu Lehanneur. Electric, the new cultural platform in Paris, is already an event in itself: a 1,000 m2 penthouse in which the designer has devised a canopy of sound suspended between heaven and earth, monumental electrical braids emerging like pitch black trees.

Impressive by day, magical by night, Electric is a venue which never sleeps. A lounge interspersed with soundproofed modules and an 80m2 terrace, Electric is a space equipped with a mixing console whose ballroom floor provides a new perspective over Paris, integrating the ring road as a perpetually moving graphic foreground facing the metal mesh of the Eiffel Tower.

An ephemeral restaurant at lunchtime, a lounge or a club from dusk ’til dawn, Lehanneur and Ana Moussinet have designed a space which can also be freely customised through video projections and an infinite number of layouts available to its customers.

A huge trompe l’œil window onto the city, surrounded by streams of LED lights, is an ultimate nod to a new Versailles, Electric has already been chosen by We Love Art, and Kavinski for the global launch of his next album, and Ducasse… Meanwhile there are already rumours about the installation of an enormous open-air swimming-pool on the site of the car park this summer.

A result of the high creative demands of the management ensured by curator John Michael Ramirez whose range of artists contributes to the cultural distinction of the venue: Greater Paris has found its centre of gravity.

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Mathieu Lehanneur appeared first on Dezeen.