In this project we renovated a 2 floor steel structure building into MAKOTO- a Japanese restaurant in Hanoi. The project is in the same precinct as the Vietnam national museum of history – a historical building designed in Hanoi's French colonial style architecture. The precinct is filled with a lot of old greenery.
Our design approach is to bring the beautiful landscape from the surroundings into the interior and make a warm and welcoming dining space that is in harmony with this area. We re-opended the windows to connect the interior with the outside landscape –a method that refers to “Shakkei”, meaning “Borrowed Scenery ” – a traditional landscape design technique.
The whole 2nd Floor is designed as private dining rooms. The wall on the museum side is opened as much as possible, while the wall on the opposite side is filled and installed with a series of built-in lamps. The ceiling of the 2nd floor is finished with woven bamboo panels, which are laid out in the direction of the garden, giving the sense that the internal space flows continuously to the outside. The big room on the 2nd Floor can be flexibly divided in to 1, 2 or 3 private dining room depending on the number of guests, by moveable partitions. These partitions and wooden louvers along the corridor make the dining room private enough, without being closed to the external space.
The space just after entering the entrance hall on the 1st floor is designed to be a free seating area with the sushi bar. This space is characterized by the low existing steel frame ceiling. We installed woven bamboo ceilings in each frame unit as small pyramid hip roofs to make the space feel warm and extensive.
Photo :Hiroyuki Oki