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      Linehouse designs Shanghai restaurant informed by New Wave art movement

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      Design studio Linehouse has filled a restaurant in a Shanghai art museum with mirrors and arched details informed by eastern and western art and design.

      Located inside the UCCA Edge museum, the New Wave by Da Vittorio restaurant was named after the original UCCA museum’s opening exhibition The New Wave Art Movement, which also set the tone for its interiors.
      Arched shapes are used throughout the restaurantNew Wave, a 20th-century art movement in China, is renowned for its bold experimentation that brought Chinese art into the modern art world.
      “The concept for the restaurant comes from the collision of these opposing elements and the process of change,” said Shanghai-based Linehouse.
      New Wave by Da Vittorio is located inside Shanghai’s UCCA Edge museumTo enter the restaurant, guests pass through a narrow passage that leads from the public museum space into a more intimate dining area.

      The restaurant, which measures 620 square metres, also holds a bar, private dining rooms and an outdoor terrace.
      Mirrors create an illusion of more spaceA sequence of arches was added to the restaurant in reference to the use of colonnades in classical architecture, while matching arched mirrors create an illusion of spatial progression.
      New Wave by Da Vittorio also features a ceiling installation formed by arches designed in a more eastern style.
      Hanging fabric was cut into curved shapes to match the arches in the interiorThe installation consists of hanging fins made from a Japanese triaxle fabric with a woven texture, which has been cut into vaulted shapes to create a softness that evokes floating clouds.
      The sheets of fabric are placed in a repetitive order with a pattern that only emerges once you see through one sheet to the next. The studio hoped this would evoke the contradiction between order and chaos.

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      “Throughout the restaurant, we seek contradiction in materiality to create qualities of soft and hard, rough to smooth, order to unordered and solid to transparent,” Linehouse co-founder and lead designer Alex Mok told Dezeen.
      The studio used stone for the main bar counter, which it sculpted into a curved, fluid shape to further explore the juxtaposition between soft and hard surfaces.
      Linehouse deliberately chose a stone with a smaller repetitive pattern to create a continuous piece.
      A stone bar is decorated with mirrorsThe bar area also has a floor patterned with different kinds of stone while in the private dining rooms, precision-machined stainless steel and curved lacquered timber were paired to create another form of contradiction.
      “Materials are manipulated as a catalyst for creating disorder, dissipation, fragmentation and surprise,” Mok said.
      Different types of stone create a polka-dot pattern on the floorLinehouse also recently finished a space-theme cafe for Australian chain Black Star Pastry’s first Chinese outpost.
      The studio was named emerging interior designer of the year at the 2021 Dezeen Awards.
      The photography is by Jonathan Leijonhufvud.
      Project credits:
      Architect: LinehouseDesign lead: Alex Mok, Briar HicklingDesign team: Jingru Tong, Inez Low, Aiwen Shao, Leah Lin, Jiabao Guo, Cherngyu Chen
      Dezeen is on WeChat!
      Click here to read the Chinese version of this article on Dezeen’s official WeChat account, where we publish daily architecture and design news and projects in Simplified Chinese.

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      Norm Architects conceives Xiamen's Basao tea parlour as an oasis of calm

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      Danish practice Norm Architects has created an understated interior for the Basao teahouse in Xiamen that was designed to offer a “clear antidote” to the hustle and bustle of the Chinese port city.

      Basao takes its name from Baisao, a Japanese monk who lived during the Edo period and spent the latter part of his life wandering around Kyoto and selling tea.
      The Basao tea lounge is arranged around a Chinese stone counterHis Zen Buddhist writings were a key reference point for Norm Architects in the design for the “tea lounge”, which is meant to evoke a sense of tranquillity.
      “With room for quiet contemplation, the space is a clear antidote to our fast-paced on-the-go culture, instead immersing its visitors in the calming sounds of tea being prepared, poured and enjoyed,” the studio said.
      Seating around the counter provides views of the brewing processAt the heart of the store is a chunky counter crafted from speckled Chinese stone that is positioned beneath a coffered oak ceiling.

      Here, customers can order drinks and observe them being prepared from a couple of high stools.
      A wider variety of seating is assembled on one side of the room, incorporating different tactilities and shapes from suede poufs to wooden benches and a long banquette upholstered in chestnut-brown leather.
      More seating lies at the room’s periphery”Carefully considering the sense of touch, the experience of the space becomes an interplay of textures and temperatures in combination with contrasting polished and raw surfaces,” Norm Architects explained.
      To the other side of the lounge is a retail space, where Basao merchandise is showcased on black steel shelves.

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      More products can be presented on slim metal ledges and pivoting displays built into the tea parlour’s oak-panelled walls.
      Oakwood also covers the building’s facade, which was modified so that its walls are sloped invitingly towards the entrance.
      Black steel shelves display Basao’s products in the retail spaceThe facade is punctuated by huge windows that can be pushed up concertina-style to let fresh air and natural light into the interior.
      Alternatively, customers have the option of sitting outdoors on the terrace, which is decorated with a number of leafy plants.
      A large window allows the tea parlour’s interior to be opened up to the outdoorsBasao is Norm Architects’ first project in China.
      The Copenhagen-based practise has recently completed a number of interiors in its hometown including Notabene, a shoe store with warm industrial interiors, and a bookstore that takes design cues from old-school libraries.
      The photography is by Jonathan Leijonhufvud.

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