Project Site: Zhuhai
Project Area: 200 m²‍
Project Type: Retail Interior
Design Date: 2022.02
Team Role: Design
Project Architect: Minyan Li
Team: Yanyan D, Jiaqi Z
Structural Engineer: Ying Xin

The project requires a renovation to a Chinese style ancient structure with a courtyard into a modern bistro features both brunch, dinner, bar and dancing pool. The site is in Zhuhai, and many nearby old structures have been renovated to bars and coffee shops to crater to the current trends in lifestyles.

In order to accommodate these functions desired by the client, as well as to increase interior areas that receives natural lighting, we designed a skylight device that caps the courtyard and connects the five independent interior rooms through this central interior courtyard. This interior courtyard also becomes perfect set-up for the bar counters and brunch areas. The bar counter is divided into two areas, to mimic the volume of burnt butter, also to make space for the placement of the columns that support the skylight device.

The other five existing interior rooms are designed into kitchen, lounge-bar, the main dinning area, the office and a dancing room with a DJ station.

The kitchen sits behind the bar areas, whereas a window opens into the kitchen to provide visual connections into this modern-styled kitchen. A tall chimney stands above the slopped terra-cotta roof, to provide evoking lighting at night to resemble a light tower to guide the visitors to find the way. Opposite the kitchen is the lounge bar room, in which dimmed lighting are designed to create the right ambience for romantic dating. More refined materials such as Italian travertine are used as wainscoting for the wall. A narrow on-the-wall bar counter is placed near the wall with two viewing windows, to also make this space suitable for coffee during the day.

Outside the lounge bar area, we placed an interior courtyard that features another skylight that provides natural lighting for plants below and set back a glass partition to create an office space for the main chef and the manager of this establishment.It is designed to be more than an office but also a meeting room for his guests. Grided plywood panel is used to decorate the upper section of the façade, and grided drop ceilings wells are designed in the interior, resembling the formats of butter productions.

 The main dining hall is at the end of the main central axis, in which room we play the contrast between colors of black and red. The back-wall is designed to be a lighting installation where warm neon lights mounted in array in front of grided metal panels in the background of red satin lacquer. A central seating device is designed to host eight main tables, with custom designed lighting flying above.

 This project remains unbuilt.




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