Man Chao Hui Restaurant
Various Associates was tasked with creating the Man Chao Hui Restaurant with various unique dining spaces utilizing eye-catching elements on the walls, installations, and lighting.
Seclusion
Man Chao Hui is a top-notch restaurant that serves superior Chinese seafood hot pot, situated in an upscale commercial complex beside Shenzhen Bay. It provides upscale, luxury catering services to elites in the city. “Chinese style”, “luxury”, “exquisite”, “private”, “wealth”, “auspicious”, “lively” and “classy” are 8 key words given by the client for conceiving the restaurant. Inspired by seafood that the restaurant mainly serves, Various Associates imagined the space based on the concept “a wooden boat hidden in the sea”, trying to lead diners to an immersive journey.
Various Associates conceived each space by drawing on traditional Chinese gold, red, green and purple colors, which have different connotations. The mix of the four strong colors with different materials form a unique world of color.
Occupying an area of merely about333 square meters, the overall space needed to accommodate dining rooms, bar counter, booth area, pantry, and bathrooms, etc. As the space is mainly meant for entertaining, the design firstly needed to meet the requirements for setting multiple private dining rooms. Meanwhile, it had to organize diversified functions in the limited space with an uncramped spatial pattern.
For the spatial layout, Various Associates focused on breaking the stereotype of conventional restaurant dining rooms and creating unique experiences. Through pondering and analyzing the circulation and materials, the design team created diverse experiences and weakened the cramped feeling in the space.
Exploration
The facade structures can rotate and open like cabin doors, revealing the interior atmosphere from different angles. The door leafs of the booth seats area are opened laterally, subtly introducing the view from the outside space. Passers-by are attracted by the lively and boisterous air of the restaurant.
The long, dim passage shows a sense of mystery, and the wooden walls feature warm textures.
The small private booth seats provide a sense of security, and the calming lighting makes people forget the passage of time.
As people walking ahead, the gradient of structures and the folding ceiling subtly broaden or focus the field of vision, hence bringing a unique spatial experience.
The calming wood tone, moderate lighting and refreshing green plants create various classy and tastefully exquisite scenes in the space. Behind the door is a gorgeous mirrored world.
Multiple doors with the same form show up gradually along the way forward, and each one is decorated with Malus Spectabilis (Chinese crabapple) flower patterns in different colors.
Feast
Elements full of contrasting tension are matched in a playful manner, presenting strong characteristics and creating unique identity for each space.
Traditional Oriental elements like pine bonsai, table lamps, screens and floral patterns are mixed and echo each other through mirrors, making diners feel like they’re in a Chinese courtyard mansion. In contrast, the materials show a strong modern touch, colliding yet integrating with traditional materials.
The End
The design needed to balance multiple materials and break the “monotonous circulation and experience”of conventional private dining rooms, and to organize an uncramped layout in the limited space and bring various unique spatial experiences. Besides, it had to create a series of spatial scenes relevant to seafood, produce a dining atmosphere suitable for fixed hot-pot round tables, and give each dining room a distinctive spatial character, so as to create an inclusive, free and eternal aesthetic in the space. All of the above posed great challenges to the design team.
Design: Various Associates
Design Team: Qianyi Lin, Dongzi Yang, Shiqi Li, Zhichao Lin, Chenchen
Photography: SFAP
