The restaurant features Huaiyang cuisine, the No.1 national banquet cuisine, and the owner hopes to upgrade the original chain-brand Huaiyangyun to a high-end Huaiyangyun Blue Diamond restaurant to better serve customers with different needs and to maintain some of the classic elements of the original Huaiyangyun.
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International Interior Design Awards 2023
Huaiyangyun
Restaurant Interior Built
Firm
Guo Xin Space Design Studio (Xi’an) Co., Ltd.
Designer
Guo Xin
Design Team
Guo Xin, Li Yang, Li Xingyu
Location
Xi ‘an, Shaanxi Province
Country
China
Photographer/Copyright
©Guo Xin
The restaurant perches in the street at No. 7 Fengcheng Rd. in Xi’an City, with few business banqueting restaurants in the vicinity. As a result, there are a very few restaurants positioning high-end and high-standard Huaiyang cuisine. The location of the restaurant itself is of business advantage. A separate lift leads directly to the restaurant. Although the restaurant logo of Huaiyangyun is small-sized one, it always attracts guests to stop and enter the restaurant to enjoy the ambience of the design and the taste of Huaiyang cuisine, the No. 1 cuisine in China.
The restaurant has an original L-shaped layout and structure, and the interior has high ceilings with plenty of light space. The restaurant also has its own deficiencies such as multiple entrances, more interior flow lines and fewer communal areas. Then the kitchen is at the end of the restaurant, so that the food delivery route overlaps with guest access inevitably. How to promote brand-honored quality in the small communal areas? How to prevent the tight contact and block in accesses? How to preserve the original strengths while offset the weaknesses by a proper design? These were the initial questions for start the design.
First, the frequency of use of the two entrances has been analyzed. The main entrance is designed with a curved glass wall of A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains, with light and shadow mapping the pattern onto the gold brick floor, creating a water-like reflection, which also is one of the biggest highlights of the design. A curved logo wall not only effectively magnifies the public area visually, but also overcomes the disadvantages that only a glance could go into the public area. The secondary entrance makes use of curved white emulsion molding as a guide, with a Taihu lake stone landscape floating with bamboo shadows around, giving an illusion of entering into a garden in South China. The two different entrances guide guests to the same center. The visual transitions make the original small space seem quiet and cascading.
The entrance to the bathroom is normally designed to be concealed, but due to the space limitations, we were unable to avoid the problem of the bathroom door facing directly into the public area. So by making use of the height difference on the ground, the inserting of Taihu lake stone, bamboo shadows on the façade and the hanging white mountain wall, the original bathroom entrance directly opposite the public area has been hidden behind these cascading scenes. Through the opening in the white wall, another view of the bamboo forest can be seen on the other side, making the space zoom in and interesting.
Finding a demanding decorative material such as Taihu lake stone can be hard to come by compared to conventional materials. After a long search in the local market, the stone was finally spotted at first sight in an unloading transport truck, and eight men carried it indoors. It was of course necessary to consider whether the load-bearing capacity was met for the restaurant. The natural holes in this stone form a natural planting pool and the upside part is also unique. This is the right thing for the right place.
Gold bricks were first used in the laying of the ground in the Imperial Palace, and it has a simple and delicate style in this restaurant design. The materials used in this design are black and gray wood, blue and green wall coverings and gold bricks, emphasizing the elegance and grace of the “Blue Diamond”. The picture of A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains also highlights the quality of Huaiyangyun’s premium brand, ideally integrating culture and material into this design.
It is not the size of the space that determines how well it is used, but rather the sight and feel of creating different angles in an already confined space is what we need to refine. Just as with Wong Kar-wai’s films, the beauty of which can be found by taking them seriously, the same goes for design.