This is a collection of the most creative restaurant designs in the world, from risky and modern to traditional and laid back. This compilation of vivid photographs and detailed layouts gives examples ...
Switched On: Talk about a curve-wrecker. Designer Karim Rashid just made mall dining cool with the new Switch restaurant and lounge in the Dubai Mall.
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By Mary Scoviak
Even international celebrity status didn't give Karim Rashid a leg up for his first project in Dubai. He faced the same challenges as any designer who accepts a “mall stall” commission: space limitations, as in the 82 ft.-by-24 ft. footprint of the space; ingress/egress problems, as in the need for two entrances in a tight rectangle; and noise, as in the decibel-driving music and chatter that permeate these cavernous spaces. Nor did he get any special leeway in meeting management's standard regulations, including a proviso that nothing could be attached to the walls.
If anything, Rashid got a grilling from Dubai Mall Management, which has favored a conservative blend of Arabic-ornamented Western design for its more than 1,000 shops and over 150 food and beverage outlets. Executives' initial reaction to his proposal's undulating walls and rainbow color washes was chilly. “This restaurant almost didn't happen because Dubai Mall Management didn't like the design and said it did not fit the mall's language,” he says. “I encouraged my client [Al Bassam Group] to fight to have it built.”
What Al Bassam fought for, and won, was a restaurant design that proves there's no excuse for what Rashid terms “bad, banal interiors.” Okay, so the configuration wasn't ideal and the site, even in the world's largest mall (in total area), wasn't exactly haute monde. But, says the designer, “It was raw space, a brand new box.” He envisioned a clean, contemporary, sensory environment that would be an oasis from the chaos of the mall. And that meant crafting a look that neither broke the (undisclosed) budget nor cluttered up this narrow eatery.
His solution came in the form of rippling fiberglass walls that evoke the changing surface of desert sand dunes. “The walls are the major design piece in the space,” he says. Installation required ingenuity. Because of the prohibition against affixing them to the structural walls, the fiberglass walls were designed and engineered to be freestanding, requiring only minimal infrastructural support. Although they look like they have no joints, they are, in fact, a series of 17-in., modular floor-to-ceiling panels. Each of the 17 pieces was sanded, buffed and polished on-site to make the wall look seamless.
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