13 October 2009

print

Imagine a dinner one evening…


zoom

zoom

zoom

zoom

zoom

zoom

zoom

Imagine an evening stroll in New York through the East Village, down Second Avenue. Suddenly the monotonous line of grey city buildings is interrupted by a long, brightly-lit window that seems to provide a glimpse of a parallel dimension – a welcoming world of rounded forms imbued with an air of serenity and lightness and coloured in various shades of pink.
This is Kurve, the restaurant entirely planned and designed by Karim Rashid, where everything bears the deep imprint of the Canadian designer’s individual style and creativity – in particular, his vision of a world free from corners: “Given that we humans are so pliable, organic and asymmetric,” explains Rashid, “it’s strange that we should live in such a Cartesian universe.”
Following on naturally from this concept, everything in the restaurant is rounded in shape: the walls, the ceiling, the glass frontage of the street-side veranda, the furnishings in general, even the windows themselves. The wallpaper, designed personally by Rashid, plays its part too, creating the effect of a continuous mural of curving, colour-changing lines that helps provide the general sensation of an organic environment. Pink, the designer’s favourite colour for the sense of positive energy it transmits, decorates the furnishings in a number of different shades. So special is the overall result that dinner becomes a complex and variegated sensorial experience where the chef’s eclectic oriental cuisine is only one of many contributing ingredients.
But Kurve isn’t an isolated case, as, more and more frequently, the owners of important restaurant chains and the world’s most prestigious chefs are turning to the world of design for the creation of stimulating environments and unforgettable atmospheres. The result being that, over the last few years, more and more internationally famous designers and architects have become involved in creating scenarios around the theme of hospitality and convivial settings for social encounters. Before Kurve, for example, Rashid had already worked with the chef Morimoto on his eponymous restaurant in Philadelphia, and in 2009 he was responsible for Dubai’s Switch restaurant, in both cases proving that it was possible to offer the feature traits of his uniquely individual aesthetic in different versions.
Philippe Starck, while remaining faithful in all his projects to the concept of design and architecture as a nexus of life-enhancing qualities created to lead people towards a sense of greater happiness, brings a wealth of experience to this particular sector. After Le Lan in Beijing (2007) and Le Meurice – which he worked on together with his daughter Ara – to name only two of his most recent projects, in 2009 the French maestro was responsible for Moscow’s new Bon restaurant. The inauguration there provided the occasion to explain the beliefs – invariably surprising and ironic – that underpin his creative work.  Chaos and luxury frolic together, with graffiti-decorated walls, candles, imposing baroque lamps, mismatched tables and chairs, gilded mirrors, precious crystal and silver, coloured skulls and glass and carpets laid the wrong-way up, all carefully chosen to evoke a Gothic atmosphere created by Starck to reflect the image of the new Russia, with its vast wealth but also its darker side of violence and criminality. A restaurant design, in other words, becomes an intellectual manifesto.
At other times, design can intervene to transform a restaurant into something more sophisticated, a half-way house between a cultural happening and a ritzy date. Thanks to the talents of architect Mark Lawson Bell, that’s what has happened to an old Victorian building in London, which has become the Sketch Lecture Room, one of the capital’s hippest places to be seen in and a common gathering place for VIPs and celebrities.  The basic concept here is that cooking is an art like any other and so, together with arts such as painting, music and literature, it can be enjoyed and experienced as an excellent accompaniment to a moment of cheerful socialising. So the austere walls of this old building in Conduit Street might find themselves rather surprised to contain the Gallery, with tables arranged at the centre of an exhibition of contemporary art, the Lecture Room, the Parlour, the Glade tea room and, open only in the evening, the East Bar. With furnishings that mix traditional British styles with modern design, startling colours, and several surreal touches (the bathrooms are shaped like a gigantic egg, for instance) each area offers its own fantastic little world: it’s no surprise, then, that the architect admits to having taken his inspiration from Alice in Wonderland.
In other words, whether it’s the occasion to express a particular aesthetic taste, launch an ethical message or give free range to the imagination, dining-design will certainly give you something to chew on!


http://www.kurvenyc.com/
http://www.sketch.uk.com/


Ripalta Borrelli