Hasta La Ideas

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.

The post Voodoo Ray’s by
Gundry & Ducker appeared first on Dezeen.

London studio Gundry & Ducker have added oak booths and stencilled tree-like graphics to the interior of an Italian chain restaurant in Hertfordshire, England.

Bauble-shaped pendant lights are clustered in each of the three dining rooms of ASK Hertford, two of which feature deep green walls.

Oak tables and chairs are either laminated or painted in green and white, arranged randomly around the restaurant.

Wine bottles displayed on the walls behind the wooden bar appear to have bright white shadows.

The restaurant is one of a few ASK outlets that the architects are upgrading.

You can see a couple more projects by Gundry & Ducker here, including a pub inside a cardboard box.

Photography is by Hufton + Crow.

Here’s some more text from Gundry & Ducker:

Ask Italian Hertford

As part of a major refurbishment program Gundry & Ducker were asked to re-design Ask Italian in Hertford.

The design is intended to create a warm and relaxed dining environment for both the evening and daytime, whilst maintaining a sense of the simple white restaurant interiors that typified Ask’s early restaurants.

The restaurant is sited within a sequence of interconnecting spaces, Victorian shop, covered courtyard & Edwardian showroom, which with their differing volumes together provide the framework for the design.

The first space is light and addresses the street, The floor is striped in contrasting grey tiles, bespoke pendent lights hang low over a mix of white and timber tables, projecting a silhouette onto the ceiling at night that are echoed on the walls. The openness of the space is contrasted with a sense of enclosure created by high backed benches, with rich green interiors and a new bar and back display.

The second space is a vertical volume with a vaulted ceiling and central lantern light. This dark green volume is dominated by the a chandelier, a version of the brass and glass bespoke lighting that runs throughout the restaurant, The walls are decorated with murals in light green inspired by the out line of trees, in turn influenced by the history of the town.

The third space, previously a draper’s showroom, is the largest and lowest of the three. Here the space is sub divided into “a space within a space”, where walls are cut away to form castellated screens and booths green on the insides, clad in oak on the outside.

Throughout the scheme the oak flooring is manipulated to form the furniture, turning the boards through 45° and up the face of key elements within the space. Interior reveals and lit elements are picked out in greens from a pallet that runs throughout the restaurant. The tabletops are a mix of sharp white and laminated timber the laminated chairs are finished in Oak and greens from the recurring pallet.

London studio Gundry & Ducker have completed the interior for a Thai restaurant in Soho, London, featuring moulded oak panelling. (more…)