When the client approached Spacemen for their restaurant design, their immediate concern was to introduce Edward Tan, Spacemen Director and project lead, to the modern interpretation of the traditional Malaysian food the chef would be creating. This is, in many ways, normal – design follows menu, if you will – but here, the client insisted on wood-fire cooking being the design driver. “They wanted something that’s very stripped down to a really primordial dining experience where everything is fire,” says Edward, who was asked to “imagine back to ancient times and how people cooked food over fire in the cave.”
Edward’s first hurdle was convincing the client that though fire could be used in some ways, as a restaurant within a mixed-business tower in Kuala Lumpur, they could not have an open fire in the middle of the restaurant. “Looking at references from overseas where there are four seasons, having a fireplace indoors makes sense, but in Malaysia, in a tropical country, it doesn’t,” says Edward. His solution took the form of “deconstructing the notion of actual fire” as a visual language of the cave, wood and fire.
The most instantly Instagram-able element is the arrival corridor of stacked timber. “In Malaysia, firewood is very local, readily available, everywhere. So, something that everybody knows, but I wanted to return to something more abstract and fun as well. Instead of a forest, we use the firewood to create a jungle track for people to gather and discover, to travel through the cave – through this corridor jungle – to the restaurant,” says Edward. He felt that there are already enough restaurants in Malaysia with a forest or jungle entrance!
Tall, thin mirrors within the stacks give the impression of a much longer space, while imparting an infinity aspect to the floor-to-ceiling stacks that visually negates awareness of the ceiling itself. It is exceedingly clever, as are the turns and shifts within the stacks that conceal side entrances to different parts of the restaurant. Having decided to use the same wood that is used in the wood-fire oven inside the restaurant, a wood shortage came into effect and Edward had to compete with the chef to get enough wood for the entry to be as impressive as it is. Good thing he won out, as it is a fabulous piece of staging.
From the arrival corridor the space opens into a vaulted reception space where the curved walls are entirely covered in a warm terracotta toned stucco. A round aperture-like light box gives the room a ‘moon’, while the floor of irregular stone pavers, continued from the corridor, reinforces the outdoor primitive effect. A simple pair of geometric blocks, clad in a bright quartzite of orange and brown, serves as the reception station.
The entrance to the restaurant is irregularly rounded and the stucco is continued throughout on all walls and ceiling. The ceiling is punctuated by large back lit installations of a golden orange stainless steel mesh that have been sculpted in-situ to represent fire. All, however, did not go quite to plan and, having bought the materials and made maquettes in the office, the team discovered that the weight was very different when the installations were put in place. Edward explains further: “There’s a lot of unforeseen circumstances and constraints that we encountered along the way. First the mesh itself, when smaller, holds its form very well, but when you have such a large-scale piece, that’s fifteen-by-two-metres wide, we didn’t anticipate that it would be so soft, so we had to adapt along the way.”
The tables below the installations are custom designed grey travertine paired with large comfortable chairs in a custom fabric, “The clients wanted the space to be uncommon, they wanted it to be something completely different from other restaurants, to ensure that whenever people came in or shared the photo on Instagram, they were considering the brand as unique, hence we managed to find a supplier to customise all the fabrics and upholstery,” says Edward.
A 22-seat U-shaped Chef’s table wrapping around the open kitchen and wood-fire stove is deliberately engaged with the heat of the fire. It is showmanship at its best, and as Tan says “It is really fun, parties or wedding guests are able to get up and close with the chef’s cooking. They wanted to really allow the customers to be smelling the food, feeling the heat in a way that is as close as possible.”
The floor is a simple grey travertine with fire introduced peripherally, though the burnt-looking timber defining the booths and surrounding the bar. Mirrors are introduced again with some walls featuring the irregularly cut shape of the entrance to surround a mirror, while others are actual openings to different dining areas (an event space for 30 and a private dining room). The thresholds for these spaces are concealed by a large terracotta curtains that can be moved completely out of view when the rooms are joined.
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For the VIP private dining room, Edward was adamant that the primordial caveman dining ideal be elevated to introduce shelter as an evolution, whereby the same palette was used in a different way (like the chef using traditional Malaysian ingredients to make something contemporary). His move was to turn the material palette on its head with stepped walls of grey stucco and a custom table in rich red travertine. Within this palette the sculptural form of the ceiling feature, while narrower and seemingly lighter in tone, is arguably more magnificent.
Curiously the floor is carpeted in the dining room and, as Edward explains, “my client has a very good understanding of the market that they were intending to cater for. They have a huge VIP clientele and, when they come in, they really come in… they can get loud and they like to drink and there are spills.” The space is therefore designed to absorb sound with the thick walls and carpet, but also to hide spills with an abstract pattern that is enormously forgiving.
The restaurant is a fabulous piece of sculpture that just happens to be a restaurant. That said, there is nothing pretentious or standoffish about the design, which, while elemental in nature, is also really good fun.
Spacemen
Photography
Space Storyteller
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