In 2019, Le Coq planned to expand its business by opening a restaurant in the area of Xintiandi, a prime location downtown, in the west of Shanghai.
A library of wine, 16 meters long punctuated by 5 meters vertical shelves holding more than 5,000 bottles of wine…When the customers come in, they are walking into a full wine cellar experience. We wanted to create a special experience around the wine theme for customers.
The dining area is located in the middle of our space between the wine library and the bar. So while the barman serves wine glasses at the bar, you can observe at the same time waiters, climbing ladders to access higher platform to select some bottle of wine. Once chosen, the bottle of wine will be delivered in a basket using a rope system. It brings a full scenery to our customer wine experience.
Terra cotta walls participates to the wine cellar atmosphere. While it is usual to get the bar at the back, our bar stands at the front challenging codes. It is at the border of our facade, offering seats indoor and outdoor. The facade can be totally open, semi-closed or entirely closed. These several combinations allow to create a different type of openings and to create different faces for our restaurant in order to renew client experiences.
Once the facade is closed, we can close a second layer of doors and create VIP rooms. The light coming through holes offers privacy, but also a nice vibrating lighting play through different hole sizes.The atmosphere has been targeted to feel sophisticated and very warm with a play full balance in color, between the blue and the orange in furniture.
Not all but the side banquets, cross banquet, some chairs and the main pendant lighting and smaller lighting elements have been bespoke for this project.