Project: Shanghai Zi Fu Hui Restaurant
Architects: LDH DESIGN
Location: Shanghai, China
Area: 9,579 sf
Year: 2021
Shanghai Zi Fu Hui Restaurant by LDH Design
Designer Liu Daohua often applies “architectural thinking” in interior design, combining shape and color to build space art with strong visual impact and unique personal temperament. This kind of temperament can best reflect the designer’s design philosophy, which requires the designer to have good foresight, managing ability, and a firm “challenger” mentality towards the project.
As another masterpiece of his “architectural thinking”, Zi Fu Hui Restaurant combines international aesthetic standards with oriental poetic flair, which is a rare quiet place in the bustling metropolitan of Shanghai.
Fashion and Deposition
It is said that “the old Shanghai has a prosperous market, where the international situation changes occur on Shanghai Bund”. When it comes to the collision and integration of Eastern and Western cultures, Shanghai is the first city to accept this “evolution” comprehensively. From architecture and art to people’s life notions, both avant-garde fashion and traditional classics were undergoing rise and fall over the past ten decades, making this international city the forefront of cultural trends and the city of the world, where Zi Fu Hui Restaurant came into being.
Zi Fu Hui is managed by Mr. Zhou Ziyang, the “Gentleman Chef”. The first character of the restaurant name is taken from his given name, while “Fu” and “Hui” both convey good meanings of blessing and wisdom. It offers high-end Cantonese cuisine for private customized banquets. The combination of the top gourmet style and the unique space design style defines “international”, “oriental”, “fashionable” and ” elegant” in the new era.
Nature and Connection
The restaurant is pure, quiet, and elegant, where the darkened light and shadow appear deep and stand out from the outside environment. The unique entrance design allows diners to slow down and feel each other with a humble attitude. The “hitching post” standing still at the entrance has a rich ceremonial sense, with the meaning of welcome, and giving the space the connotation of exorcising evil spirits and blessing the house.
The overall space is pure and elegant, concise in form and profound in meaning. The large glass curtain wall brings the skylight and city view into the space, providing a better view and connecting the interior and nature.
Atmosphere and Nature
“I like what is brought by natural light,” says Liu Daohua. In the interior light design, he imitates the architectural light sense, trying to restore the effect of natural light on the space as much as possible to enhance the sense of space experience. The artworks with strong red color are scattered in several different places as the finishing touch of the restaurant, which has an interactive relationship with the space and creates a color atmosphere of mystery.
The architectural thinking can be seen throughout the entire restaurant, with simple and geometric lines connecting the overall space. The chef born in the 1980s is a representative of youth and masculinity. Liu Daohua uses rigid materials to introduce urban reinforced concrete into the interior design, and more architectural design techniques are combined with plain cement as the main material to create a shocking visual impact.
Sentiment and Dining
As Yu Qiuyu once said, “Culture is a spiritual value and way of life that have become habits, thus, ultimately a personality of collectivity.” Liu Daohua integrates the oriental sentiment with an international aesthetic perspective, not only to design a restaurant but to express the value and art of dining, thus presenting the cultural representation of an era.
Based on architectural space and artistic form, architectural techniques are adopted to construct the space, creating a modern masterpiece and returning to the core of the “high-level hospitality space” of Zi Fu Hui, which is tracing the source of fresh food and returning to the original nature.
-Project description and images provided by ZZ Media
