OpenHouse

OpenHouse is a Malaysian fine dining restaurant which celebrates the local tradition of "open house", where people of all races and cultures open their homes to friends, family and guests over festive periods to celebrate and enjoy the many exquisite and exotic cuisines here. OpenHouse strives to capture that festive spirit, the multi-cultural richness, and the celebration of food that is such an integral part of the local culture setting a very high bar for us in creating the rest of the customer experience, including an interior that needed to be as rich and diverse as the menu it celebrates. OpenHouse as a design is ultimately about storytelling... We avoided cliches when translating a Malaysian identity into interior experiences, instead crafting a series of stories rooted in local culture but abstract in their representation - colours, textures, and silhouettes all come together in an eclectic installation of over 500 individual objects representing the diverse story that is Malaysia through a series of interconnected spaces with unique personalities... Malay, Chinese, Indian, Peranakan, Colonial, Indigenous, capturing the spirit of the rural kampungs on the South China Sea to the bustling trading port for silks and spices that once was Melaka, our palette is as diverse as our source yet still cohesively works as a whole. As Malaysia is modernising rapidly, yet still so culturally diverse, we wanted to capture that dichotomy in our interior with something that felt fresh yet always familiar. Understanding how the many cultures here are interwoven in peoples' daily lives became key to our drive to weave a similar dynamic in their experience here. Maximalism was our objective, restraint became our tool in making this all work. Furniture, finishes and artefacts were chosen both for their richness and their eclectic diversity, including over 170 fabrics shortlisted from an initial 500, where subtle nuances of colour and texture were examined to find that fine balance between chaos and chemistry. Individual rooms link seamlessly telling the greater story that is Malaysia. Entry is via a grand staircase reminiscent of many of the grand colonial buildings found throughout Malaysia, which rises dramatically to a rotunda encased in a giant Chinese lantern that begins the customer experience. From here, the Salon evokes the spice trade of centuries past, rich in a palette of saffron and turmeric, silk and velvet, embroidery and animal skins, a testament to the glorious chaos that one might have found in the coastal trading ports of historic Melaka. Off this room is the "Smoking Room", a tongue in cheek reference to Malaysia's colonial past, where again leathers and velvets adorn the panelled library of an old colonial interior, made entirely of a "preserved by fire" charcoaled timber known as Shou Sugi Ban. The Plantation Room serves as the main dining room and collects references of Malaysia’s agrarian past, where hand beaten brass lamps evoke the merenjis ceremony of Malay weddings, and woven macrame screens take clues from the charpoy beds found frequently in rural estates. At the far end is the Baba Nyonya Room, celebrating the uniquely Malaysian culture of the Peranakan where Chinese and Malay cultural traditions are combined in a riotous melange of colours, textures, and embroidery, opulent and rich, yet uniquely Malaysian. What is most interesting is how OpenHouse has tapped a unique zeitgeist in the recent cultural development of the country where after decades of development and modernisation - many forgotten and once loved cultural traditions are now being rediscovered, and a new sense of "What is the Malaysian identity?" is being actively discussed. This discussion formed the backbone of our exploration, which began, as do most things here, with food! Food has always been the great communicator in Malaysia society, and at OpenHouse food has created a new sense of pride in local cuisine, of rediscovering long lost recipes, produce foraged from the depth of the jungles, of techniques and traditions setting a very high bar for the interior to tell that same story of Malaysia’s rich and varied history while also telling a story of what the future might be. This celebrating of all things local, in an exciting and dynamic interior, was the most challenging aspect of our brief, and had to be something that Malaysian’s could feel was uniquely theirs yet at the same time, world class in every way.