A Window for Scenic Contrasts in a Basement Space
This Italian restaurant is located in a building basement. The client hoped to realize a
comfortable atmosphere with a combined kitchen and dining area—a restaurant where
customers could feel like guests in the chef’s home. The site, nevertheless, was a
basement with no windows, divided in half by a thick structural wall, so conditions were
far from suited to evoking the atmosphere of a house. The conventional interior design
approach, in this case, would be to hide the concrete foundation with drywall, while the
usual renovation-style method would be to leave the concrete walls exposed. Yet,
neither of these methods, we felt, could sufficiently create a warm house-like mood.
Then an idea struck us. We would trim the thick structural wall to create a “window” as
an element evoking the composition of a house. Then, by painting the entire back room
black, we would evoke a night terrace outside the window. By portraying an existing
concrete beam as a ridgepole and applying a pitched ceiling, we gave the front room
before the window an appearance like a house interior. A long dining table penetrates
the window to connect the two spaces. In the front room before the window, guests can
dine in a bright, cheerful house interior, and in the back room, they can relax over
drinks in dim light.
Our aim was to create a poetic relationship between two spaces in a small restaurant:
the chef’s living room to which guests have been invited and a terrace under the mantle
of night. Each presents a scenic contrast to the other through the window.
View Original