Lagranja Design mixes sophistication and fun, while giving a lesson in Spanish pop culture in its design of the new FOC restaurant in Singapore, writes Olha Romaniuk.
January 12th, 2015
Behind an unassuming facade of a refurbished shophouse on Hong Kong Street is an energetic restaurant that emanates a fiery, passionate Barcelonean aura through a multi-layered array of tastes and sights under one inconspicuous roof. While much of FOC restaurant’s magnetism is in its Michelin-starred chef Nandu Jubany, the whimsical and playful interior, conceptualised and executed by Barcelonian-based Lagranja Design, stands its ground as one of the more imaginative and high-spirited F&B interiors to have recently opened in Singapore.
The design of FOC, a Catalan word for fire and, in this instance, an allegory for chef Jubany’s passion for cooking, had to enhance the overall dining experience by transporting the diner into Barcelona, a city that inspired Jubany’s menu creations. Thus, to highlight the food prepared by the chef and to bring the essence of Barcelona to Singapore, the design team at Lagranja chose to mix the old and the new, the quirky and the understated, and to populate the existing shophouse space with updated interpretations and inspirations from the Catalan culture.
Working within the spatial constraints of a narrow shophouse, Lagranja developed a straightforward and practical layout for the restaurant’s front and back rooms, with an elongated bar and part of the dining room spilling into the front and leading deeper into the premises to an open kitchen and a continuation of a dining area. Aside from retaining the open ceiling and painting it grey to minimise the appearance of the electrical and mechanical fixtures, Lagranja also chose to incorporate the existing glass skylight into the design, covering its original frame with maple hardwood.
Lagranja’s design team made a deliberate choice to keep the majority of the restaurant space simple and understated, emphasising on the contrasts created between darker versus brighter lit spaces and playing up juxtaposing interior features against each other. Black iron sheet wainscoting and a long perimeter shelf stand out against the largely unadorned, light grey walls, while oak wood dining room furnishings make an impactful contrast against the dyed black concrete floor with dark silkscreen printed Spanish tile patterns.
By keeping the main interior surfaces deliberately minimalist and introducing a number of intriguing decorative statements throughout FOC to draw a visitor’s eye to the peculiarities of the décor choice, the Lagranja design team have crafted a fun-spirited story of Barcelona’s vibrant pop culture. Selected patches of graffiti on the wall, a domino-tile-clad bar counter and large pendant lamps, inspired by burlesque masks from street festivals in Catalunya, evoke the unmistakably Spanish vibe within the restaurant’s spaces and contextualise the chef’s dishes for a whole immersive experience. Told through a selection of custom-made objects, created specifically for FOC to convey particular cultural elements that are unique to Spain, Lagranja has managed to infuse fun and whimsy into a design that is well and truly Catalonian.
Lagranja
lagranjadesign.com
INDESIGN is on instagram
Follow @indesignlive
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
BLANCOCULINA-S II Sensor promotes water efficiency and reduces waste, representing a leap forward in faucet technology.
To honour Chef James Won’s appointment as Gaggenau’s first Malaysian Culinary Partner, we asked the gastronomic luminaire about parallels between Gaggenau’s ethos and his own practice, his multidimensional vision of Modern Malaysian – and how his early experiences of KFC’s accessible, bold flavours influenced his concept of fine dining.
In this candid interview, the culinary mastermind behind Singapore’s Nouri and Appetite talks about food as an act of human connection that transcends borders and accolades, the crucial role of technology in preserving its unifying power, and finding a kindred spirit in Gaggenau’s reverence for tradition and relentless pursuit of innovation.
Gaggenau’s understated appliance fuses a carefully calibrated aesthetic of deliberate subtraction with an intuitive dynamism of culinary fluidity, unveiling a delightfully unrestricted spectrum of high-performing creativity.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
Woods Bagot, Architectus and Hassell were among the big recipients at the Western Australian Architecture Awards 2025.
The Hub, Australia’s largest private workspace operator, has 16 locations across the country. Their newest site – designed by Architectus and Hassell – puts Perth’s unique context front and centre.