Banu Flagship Restaurant

The Banu Hotpot restaurant design includes the interiors and façade replacement for a 2100sm building in Zhengzhou China. The program brief included dining for 300 guests, five private dining rooms, a reception and waiting area, and two open prep kitchens. As the Flagship restaurant for a growing and innovative franchise, it was important for the client that the project also creates a recognizable landmark along the main axis road and be welcoming to the community. The Banu name is derived from the stories of the rivermen who historically assisted boats to navigate treacherous rivers of China and who were known to eat hotpot foods to restore their strength. Our design sought to honor this history but creating a space formed from a natural yet turbulent flow and marked by the sinuous lines of the rope pull lattices. Our design process was organized around a series of strategies to break down the large scale, and the orthogonal structural grid of the existing building and reframe the space into a more fluid organization system. The first strategy was to introduce a series of sculptural cone-shaped private dining rooms and open kitchens that both enclosed the program while differentiating the dining spaces around them. The second strategy was to introduce two vertical conical voids at the lobby and main seating area to remove the existing floor plate and vertically tie the two dining levels together. The third strategy involved the design of an organic lattice ceiling that varied in height based on the program. The geometry of the ceiling was created from perforated metal panels bent to form an intricate yet rationalized pattern. The ceiling was composed of 9 standard modules repeated with over 700 panels. Through varying of the density, height, and size the ceiling panels we were able to transform the transparency, creating a sense of depth to space as you move through. The design process from these three strategies allowed us to create an open and flexible interior landscape with a variety of spaces all fashioned from the same organizing elements. At the exterior façade, the ideas of the interior were extended outward using the ceiling geometry vertically to form a perforated metal fin façade. At the entry, the façade is pulled up and connects along with the ceiling giving continuity between the exterior and interior envelopes. Viewed from the front elevation the perforated metal panels play with transparency and in the evening the effect reverses to create a translucent veil allowing visibility into the activities of the restaurant and creating a beacon to the street. Through the unity of interior and exterior, the effect is a constantly changing dynamic to the street where the public is welcome to view and join in the activities of the restaurant.