16 March 2009

Made in China

This new restaurant project in China re-interprets traditional Chinese landscape paintings.

This recently opened restaurant in China’s Xuzhou plays with the site’s spatial constraints to create “unique spatial languages” and a brand identity for the dining location.

Designed by Panorama Hong Kong the project covers two floors and around 3,600 m2, and has six VIP dining rooms, a bar on the ground floor, and first-floor dining areas and even a sushi bar.

Situated in down town Xuzhou Made in Kitchen is an eatery serving contemporary Chinese cuisine – with design that incorporates the narrative elements of Chinese landscape painting – ‘scenes’, ‘flow’ and ‘hierarchy’.

The interiors allude to scenes from of traditional landscape painting such as clouds, flying birds, rocks, and other natural elements such as waterfalls and the night sky.

However, this project is far from conventional, making use of modern screens and wall panelling lit by a mixture of coloured lighting, creating interplay of light and shadow.

A cage-like stairwell in dark timber links the two floors of the restaurant. “Concealed staircase light troughs suggest a virtual experience of ascending a mountain in traditional Chinese painting,” says designer and founder of Panorama, Horace Pan.

Adhering to the Chinese definition of spatial hierarchy, the colours of Made in Kitchen change in tone from bright yellow in the ground-floor bar to dark red upstairs and changes in privacy from the open dining areas to the intimate private dining rooms.

“’Unique dining experience’ are the keywords for any successful restaurant’s business strategy. Made In Kitchen aims to move that dining experience to another cultural level,” Pan says.

panoramahk.com

made in kitchen 2