Two Oversized Nests Perch Atop a Restaurant Made of Invasive Shrubs in the North Goa Jungle

All photos by Studio Charau, © Otherworlds, shared with permission

Roosted in the lush tropics of North Goa, India, a new restaurant offers patrons a view across the Vagator cliffs and into the sea from an elevated perch. Titled “Como Agua,” the open-air design is from the architects of Otherworlds, who built two large nests atop the bar that offer a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding landscape.

The 3,750-square-foot space is made primarily with bamboo and Lantana camera, an invasive flowering shrub that has wreaked havoc on local flora and fauna. Arko Saha, founder of Otherworlds, shares that the plant “has invaded over 40 percent of the Western Ghats, a total of 13 million hectares of Indian landscape. Arriving in India as an ornamental plant in the early 1800s, lantana has escaped from gardens and taken over entire ecosystems.”

For “Como Agua,” the team wrapped the woody Lantana camera around the bar, metal railings, partitions, and canopies to evoke the interlaced structures created by weaverbirds. The team adds:

The weavers are social birds, usually nesting and feeding in colonies. They collect all sorts of natural materials like twigs, fibres and leaves to weave a membrane that acts as their nest, usually hanging from the branch of a tree. Materials used for building nests include fine leaf fibers, grass, and twigs. Many species weave very fine nests using thin strands of leaf fiber, though some, like the buffalo-weavers, form massive untidy stick nests in their colonies, which may have spherical woven nests within.

Explore more of Otherworlds’ designs on Instagram. (via designboom)

a restaurant made of bamboo in a jungle. a circular nest sits atop a bar

a man reads in a sunken seating area at a restaurant made of bamboo in a jungle

a man in white pets a cat in a restaurant made of bamboo in a jungle

a restaurant made of bamboo in a jungle. a circular nest sits atop the structure

left: a man sits at a restaurant made of bamboo in a jungle. a circular nest sits atop a bar. right: a man in white stands in the bamboo nest and looks into the forest