Superfoods: Restaurants serving up a side of nature

Judging by a spate of recently designed restaurants, architects are besotted with nature. There is a logic to this: food is derived from nature, so plant-filled restaurants or ones with garden views reinforce that link. Other reasons for the trend could be the skyrocketing demand for organic food and the current vogue for jungle-like interiors brimming with plants or terrariums.

Perhaps California’s clement climes are particularly conducive to this approach. Take the recently expanded Michelin three-starred The French Laundry in Yountville, California, bought by its chef Thomas Keller in 1994. Architects Snøhetta, along with Keller and San Francisco-based architects Envelope A+D, which researched the staff’s needs, have created a new kitchen and renovated its courtyard.

The existing, rustic-looking building dates from 1900 and is surrounded by gardens and a lawn. Like the old building, the new kitchen is clad in natural materials, including charred wood and has a traditional pitched roof, although its exterior is clean-lined and modern. The kitchen’s ribbon window maximises views of greenery, including Japanese maple trees, and provides worktops with more daylight. Its curved white ceiling is intended to evoke a tablecloth unfurled across a table. In the courtyard are nooks for outdoor dining.

Indoors and outdoors merge more literally at He, a restaurant surrounded by woodland in Nanjing, China, designed by architects Goa. Founded on ecological principles, it is built around trees with a view to protecting them. The architects reconciled the building’s geometric, almost bunker-like structure with the asymmetry of nature, with trees rising up through courtyards. Inside a bar with a large window overlooks views of the sylvan setting.

Nature also encroaches on T House, a restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, dreamt up by Kientruc O. This is surrounded by a glass wall with a grid of panes, which references Le Corbusier’s Modulor concept — whereby architecture is in harmony with human proportions — and envelops a jungle-like garden.

Meanwhile, Icha Chateau, a tea bar in Shanghai, by Spacemen, is also inspired by nature, specifically by China’s tea plantations. But here it is stylised, abstracted, the plantations interpreted as undulating gold-coloured chain-metal curtains that simultaneously form private alcoves.

By contrast, Catch, a fish restaurant in Kiev, whose interior has been redesigned by YoDezeen Studio, defies the trend for all things organic — unless you count its rough, exposed brickwork and slightly surreal olive trees growing indoors. Elsewhere old-world glamour rules, thanks to an enormous banqueting table, mirrors and a vast chandelier and seafood display case.

While many designers are in thrall to nature, some still wish to recreate a classic, urban experience.

© Architonic