Olivomare Restaurant

Olivomare is a restaurant serving seafood in London, reason why Pierluigi Pui used such peculiar decorative language using more or less clear references to the sea world and environment.
The wide wall that characterizes the main dining room is entirely covered by a large cladding featuring a pattern inspired by the works of Maurits Escher. To counterpoint it, in the same room, there is a sequence of tubular luminescent tentacles evoking a stray shoal of jellyfishes or sea anemones.
In the small dining room, the cladding is characterized by a wavy relief meant to evoke the sandy surface of the beach when moulded by the wind, while in the toilets lobby the intricate branches of a coral reef closes in around any visitor.

Mestizo Restaurant

 

Architect: Smiljan Radic Clarke
Location: Santiago, Chile
Collaborators: Danilo Lazcano, Cristobal Tirado, Gonzalo Torres
Contractor: Constructora Alcoy Ltda.
Structural Engineer: Luis Soler y Asoc.
Lighting: Eduardo Godoy
Project Year: 2005
Construction Year: 2007
Constructed Area: 652 sqm
Photographs: Gonzalo Puga

This Project won a public competition convoked by the Municipality of Vitacura in Santiago in 2005 for a restaurant in Las Américas Park. The restaurant is sited at the northeast end of the park – a work by architect TeodoroFernández that is still under construction – and occupies a corner opposite some extraordinary water gardens stuck between a lookout hill and the pavement skirting the Bicentenario Avenue.

The first scheme for the competition consisted of constructing a built artifact with bits of imagery taken literally from other places. Hence, in the trial model there appeared a kid’s rubber ring, which would be the ceiling, made of an inflated PVC-lined polyester membrane, of the salon, along with lattices of the kind used for industrial watering as a perimetral support for said ceiling and a number of big lumps of granite transported from the quarry to the site. One was thus trying to generate an atmosphere with regard to an interpretation of the particular physical weight and density of each element. The aim was to create a strange sort of pavilion, a folly like those seemingly improvised ones in old parks: the Chinese pavilion, or the Japanese or the Greek, the birdhouse, and so on.


Although it was accepted by the client, this version never got made because it was thought the Municipality wouldn’t accept such an ephemeral artifact. It was decided, therefore, to change the weight and the imagery without changing the initial concept of estrangement: black reinforced-concrete beams joined to decks of the same material were set in place; these formed a “false” ceiling of the enclosure. Descending from the beams are supports that in strategic places fit with the lumps of granite of various sizes, heights and weights (as much as ten tons). Fortunately, the new model is much indebted to the early pavilions of SverreFehn and I would venture to say that it envolves the same design system as the one JosepQetglas detects in Berthold Lubetkin´s Highpoint II housing in London, except that in Chile the caryatids have been replaced by lumps of granite from the mountains: “This bringing together of things of a formally divergent origin is a common procedure in Liubetkin. In Highpoint II, the daring, thin slab of a concrete canopy was supported by two statues, reproductions of the caryatids of the Erechtheum.

Lubetkin explained this by recognizing that any kinds of support for the concrete slab was considered a loss, compared to the formal capability of the slab to suggest a tense cantilever without supports. One way to render the support invisible was to dissolve it optically among the garden elements, seen through the canopy and next to it. In gardens one can find statues. The caryatids are part of th garden, like the bushes or the flowerbeds and only by chance coincide with the canopy and fit under it. Their politeness doesn’t let them be aware of the contact, and our gaze knows how to distinguish the different pieces: some of these face the garden and other face the building”. (Qetglas, Josep, “Lenin´s gaze”, in WAM [Web Architecture Magazine], 4).

Night Club

 

Stylish interiors for a night club in Poland. I like the curtain-like skin that encloses spaces, as it lets light drop on it, generating an ever-changing interior.
Architects: Moomoo – Jakub Majewski, Lukasz Pastuszka
Location: Poland
Project year: 2008

Oslo Central Station

Norwegian architects Space Group won the competition for Oslo´s new Central Station. The project consists on demolishing a big part of the existing station, to build a 4 stories tall structure that will unify the station. It will include 2 floors for offices hanging over the station. Also, an adjacent U-shaped building will be occupied by the biggest conference hotel in Norway.
Currently, the Central Station receive 150,000 travellers every day, number expected to double in the next few years, rendering the current structure obsolete. Space Group´s project will be able to grow in stages. Construction will start on 2013, during 5 to 10 years. Quite a lot, but since the project will be done in stages it will be able to be in use during all the time.
Below, more renders by Luxigon sent to us by Space Group.

Nazca Restaurant

 

Name: Nazca, Peruvian Restaurant
Architects: Giancarlo Mazzanti and Paula Galarza
Collaborators: Sergio Garzón, Alberto Aranda, Diana Vásquez
Contractor: Jaime Pizarro
Design: 2003
Construction: 2004



The project is located on the new T zone in Bogota, Colombia. The program is divided in two zone: snacks, bar and VIP on the 2nd floor, dining and kitchen on the first floor.

The project looks to enhace the relation with street level, by overlooking pedestrians from a big stair on the entrance, to sit and watch.

Through this stair you arrive to the second floor, and after passing through the terrace you enter the bar area. From there, you go down one level onto a more protected and intimate space, on which is the main dining area which opens to an inner patio.
Stone was used relating to traditional inca works, contrasting with red glass.

Ginkgo Lounge

 

Tiago Rosado shared with us his latest project, the Ginkgo Lounge in Portimão, Portugal.
Amazing photos by FG + SG (Fernando Guerra, Sergio Guerra) after the break.

Ar de Rio Bar Esplanade

 

Architect: Guedes + DeCampos / Francisco Vieira de Campos + Cristina Guedes
Location: Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal
Collaborators: António Ferreira, Luís Campos
Structural Concept: Francisco Vieira de Campos, Cristina Guedes, Alípio Guedes
Structure Engineering: Mota Freitas, Miguel Guimarães and Alexandra Feliz (ETEC)
Contractor: DEWPOINT with TEGOPI
Graphic Design: Helena Nogueira
Constructed Area: 108 sqm
Project Year: 2007
Construction year: 2008
Photographs: FG+SG - Fernando Guerra, Sergio Guerra

Skin is not a new theme in the work of our office, neither are concepts such as standardization or mobility but the new pavilion of the bar Ar de Rio proposes a new approach to these matters. Although it may be seen as a step forward, it is really a logical follow-up to the original concept of the Bares de Gaia set, in which Ar de Rio is included. Situated in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, on the river banks of the Douro, Bares de Gaia are a set of compact steel pavilions we have designed to be bars.

The design was guided by some key concepts: great simplicity and maximum efficiency through great economy of means, all leading to standard procedures that could end in standard solutions. That is why they are almost like a kit of modules that can be freely adapted and combined. And due to the ephemeral use and the implicit mobility the efficient design of transports was in our mind during the all process. Bares de Gaia were also a test on the appropriation of a building by its inhabitants.

When the owners felt the need to extend their kitchen area, we designed a new module that could be simply added to the original set, proving the flexibility of both the conceptual and the constructive systems. Finally a new extension was asked – a terrace, one that could be somehow closed and used during the whole year. The answer came as a new but rather special pavillion, built in 2008, right by the side of the previous ones.

The new pavillion is pretty much about skin becoming structure. It’s essentially a steel frame defined by a transparent honeycomb structure. It had to be that gentle, not only in order to maintain a strong coherence in the set, but also to correspond to the breathtaking landscape. But through that extremely simple gesture we were able to maintain the formal vocabulary of Bares de Gaia while we play with the required transparency and versatility between an open and a closed space, depending on the climate conditions – it should be a versatile space, protected from the seasonal changes of weather but open to the river breeze in warmer days. The structure assures a span of 27 meters with a 5mm metal sheet assemblage, 40 cm high, creating a very expressive honeycomb pattern, which brings to the inner space a constant play between light and shadow, and an optical effect from a play between mass and lightness.


If there is a beauty in this, it comes with this structural pattern, the very essential gesture. The precision, rigour and repetition of the structural module is complemented by its expressiveness. The flexible glass structure completes the purpose, assuring the closure. Bares de Gaia could be seen in some way as prototypes, modules that could be universally applied and combined, and the new pavilion is the last piece of this kit, though taking its abstract qualities to a new level.

Ordos Restaurant

Yazdani Studio shared with us the Ordos Restaurant they are building in the Mongolian Desert. As I told you before on our interview with Mehrdad Yazdani, Yazdani Studio was one of the first practices working on the new city, with one villa finishing construction  and also a Concert Hall and this restaurant (also nearing completion), public programs required by this huge development.
During the interview, Mehrdad told us about the importance of the central courtyard for passive cooling, required on this harsh climate. More details about the project after the break:

Sited adjacent to the Ordos Art Museum, the Ordos Concert Hall, and a boutique hotel, the Ordos Restaurant promises to become a crucial element in the fabric of the Kaokaoshina district of Ordos. The restaurant’s striking appearance – of a glass box floating effortlessly above a shaped landscape – owes its diaphanous presence to an innovative materials palette of high-tech glass that includes colored inner layers, dichromatic and translucent films, and ceramic fritting. Inside, this glass mélange tantalizes patrons with constant, subtle shifts of light – an appropriate visual complement to the restaurant’s menu, which encompasses three cuisines.


The 3,000 sm restaurant maintains its vital connection to the environment on several levels. Extensive solar analysis early in the design process established an optimal orientation for the transparent building, and a large green roof harbors an array of indigenous plants. In stark contrast to the restaurant’s modern architecture, the structural skeleton of a traditional Anhui house, purchased and restored for the project, stands at the heart of a central courtyard, provoking a lively visual dialogue and narrative for this exciting culinary destination.