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    Snarkitecture designs Manifest “self-care” club in Washington DC

    Design studio Snarkitecture incorporated tiled walls and arches into a club in the US capital that offers a barbershop, a coffee bar, a boutique and a speakeasy.

    Open to the public, the Manifest club occupies a slender, four-story building in Washington DC’s Adams Morgan neighbourhood.
    Manifest is entered through a courtyard lined with wooden wallsMeant to put “a sophisticated spin on self-care”, the club was conceived by the entrepreneur KJ Hughes, along with his partners Brian Merritt and Susan Morgan.
    The aim was to create a distinctive location where people could get a haircut or beard trim, grab an espresso, buy upscale streetwear and enjoy a cocktail.
    Tiled walls and arches were incorporated into the clubThe owners turned to New York’s Snarkitecture to design the project.

    “When we set out to design Manifest, it needed to be a new kind of barbershop, inviting to all people,” said Alex Mustonen, a firm partner.
    Snarkitecture added a barbershop to the project”Simultaneously, we wanted to create a sanctuary, a community space, an institution, a one-of-a-kind experience that still feels like home,” he said.
    Set back from the street, the Manifest building is entered through a courtyard lined with wooden walls.
    The studio used a largely restrained palette of materialsThe outdoor space is adorned with pockets of greenery and curved concrete benches. At the base of the benches are illuminated reveals made of LED strips with an acrylic diffuser.
    Inside, walls are clad in white tiles, and the floor is covered in large-format cement squares. For the millwork, the team used white oak with a natural finish.
    White oak was used for the millworkThe barbershop – which encompasses four stations and an area for washing hair – is fitted with chairs wrapped in buttery leather. The coffee bar features a counter with a fluted wooden base and a terrazzo top.
    In the retail zone, clothing by brands such as Engineered Garments and Homme Pliseé is displayed within arched, wooden niches. The store also sells apparel from Manifest’s own line, Of US.
    Chairs wrapped in leather feature in the barbershopStretching across the ceiling are wooden beams with embedded LED strips – a design element that contributes to the interplay of straight and curved lines in the space.
    “Unifying details throughout the space include archways – which are meant to represent the sloughing off of the old and moving into a new phase of life – while linear elements symbolise a sense of community and connection,” the designers said.

    Snark Park provides Snarkitecture with permanent exhibition space at Hudson Yards

    A “secret staircase” leads up to the speakeasy, which seats up to 30 guests. In contrast with the lower-level space, the bar has a moody atmosphere.
    Walls are sheathed in a custom green plaster, and floors are finished with dark-stained oak. Seating areas are adorned with green velvet banquettes and leather chairs from Nikari.
    The speakeasy has a moody atmosphereOverhead are arched forms that help create a sense of intimacy while also drawing a visual connection to the arches in the lower level. The arches are finished with mosaic green tile and safety glass with wire mesh.
    Throughout the club, Snarkitecture aspired to create an environment that was both comfortable and stimulating.
    Walls are sheathed in a custom green plaster”Every single element was designed to create a welcoming, intimate atmosphere that will invoke conversation and appeal to all the senses,” the team said.
    Later this spring, Manifest will expand to include a rentable apartment with a retractable glass roof and a terrace.
    Throughout the club, the atmosphere was designed to be both comfortable and stimulatingThis is not the first project in Washington DC by Snarkitecture. In 2018, the firm created a Fun House installation in the National Building Museum’s great hall that featured a white gabled house and a kidney-shaped ball pit.
    Other projects by the studio include a shop for streetwear brand Kith within a Parisian mansion, and an installation in a Manhattan gallery that consisted of 168 white spherical orbs that changed colours when touched.
    The photography is by Michael Grant.

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    Linehouse designs Shanghai restaurant informed by New Wave art movement

    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.

    Linehouse designs space-themed cafe in Shanghai for creator of “Australia’s most Instagrammed dessert”

    “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
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