Architectural spaces of restaurants, cafes, and bars are unique in their potential for authentic design, turning the experience within them into a sort of adventure. In our design projects for gastronomic establishments, it’s precisely the design surrounding and anticipating the experience that makes these spaces unique and memorable.
Contrary to residential projects, where the focus of our design is on embodying the clients’ individual identities into an expression that supports the complete functionality of everyday life in private spaces, hospitality spaces allow for a different treatment, where design becomes an attraction for guests. As such, our design transforms from sculpting private spaces with everyday activities into creating spaces of leisure and recreation that guests gladly choose.
In our architectural and design practice, various types of hospitality venues are represented and determined by different spatial contexts in which they are located. Among the projects of our architectural practice, there are small urban cafes, beachfront restaurants and bars, rooftop terraces with restaurants, Mediterranean gastronomic oases, and mountain lodges.
The challenging and particularly dual characteristics of designing such establishments relate first to the functionality and specific design rules related to food preparation and storage, as well as other activities that are mostly carried out far from the guests’, and then to representative spaces where guests spend their time. The authentic Pujo designer hospitality space emerges precisely in this blend of gastronomic preparation requirements and the architectural process of creating attractive spaces.
City Cafes and Restaurants
Usually located on the ground floors of buildings along streets, hospitality establishments we design in urban cores are characterised by the view they offer from the street through windows and unique environments that invite guests to escape the urban hustle and bustle. By creating hospitality spaces as imaginative and playful micro universes woven into the urban pattern, we rely on the design with natural materials or vibrant colours to emphasise a place of pleasant experience.
In a project of a city restaurant inspired by branches, we divided the space into a smaller part along the street facade and a larger space further in the restaurant’s interior. The smaller part features specially designed massive furniture pieces covered in microcement, emphasising the continuity of space and the ambience’s flow over walls, floors, counters, and sofas. In the restaurant’s interior, organic natural motifs become more prominent, transforming through details from abstract forms into direct quotes of elements from nature.
Woven chandeliers emerge as bearers of natural materials, creating a rhythm that gives the impression of sitting under the shadows of the treetops, while natural branches enter the space from the back wall with a plaster motif of a tree and a geometrised depiction of a treetop. Through such interplay of textures and selection of lighting elements, we aimed to achieve the effect of sunlight penetrating through canopies, alternating between solid and hollow materials that evoke the relationship between stone textures and plants from nature.
When creating the glamorous effect of a club restaurant in Tuzla, it was important for us to eliminate the impression of the ground floor and the presence of a potentially boxy ambience from the ceiling, so we created an almost magical ambience by choosing soft colourful furniture and individual lamps grouped on the ceiling like swarms of fireflies. By using golden details and velvety materials in warm tones, we designed a photogenic and pleasant space.
Combining rich plush shades on furniture pieces with marble textures and golden accents, the club restaurant space abounds in luxurious details. At the same time, the dotted lighting from the ceiling increases the illuminating effect of carefully designed lighting throughout the depth of the restaurant.
Restaurants on Rooftop Terraces
The position of restaurants on the tops of multi-storey buildings always inspires us to create gathering and socialising spaces that communicate on one side with the view towards the surroundings and on the other with sunlight and the ancient use of rooftop terraces as sunbathing areas. In our design of restaurants on rooftop terraces, the main design motifs include the play of light and shadow embodied in different textures and transparent materials, and openness towards the edges of the space to make the panoramic views more attractive.
The design of shading and protection from weather conditions on rooftop terraces in our projects is determined by the choice of materials and textures through which light will be invited into the space. By replicating a mesh pergola in contemporary materials, in the design of a restaurant on a rooftop terrace, we achieved a regular grid through which sunlight streams, while white wall surfaces with arches in two staggered layers create the effect of a canvas on which the pergola’s dynamic shadows are projected throughout the day.
Considering the attractiveness of the restaurant’s position for various events and celebrations, when designing a restaurant on a rooftop terrace, we focused on creating unique photogenic spaces that become symbols of the restaurant, recognizable as sort of scenic backgrounds for virtual spaces of social media.
By using metal arches as structures in the space and thin curtains fluttering in the space illuminated by lanterns in the centre of the restaurant, we created an easily recognizable ambience, thus increasing the restaurant’s popularity.
Gastronomy in the Mediterranean attire
Many of our projects are related to the Mediterranean and spatial contexts along the coast, or elevations above the sea surface in different countries. When designing hospitality establishments in the Mediterranean, we aim to maximise the contact with the environment – visual, achieved by opening views from smaller dining terraces towards the sea, or tactile, where we encourage contact with sand, water, or plants through design motifs.
In creating a Mediterranean gastronomic oasis in France, we invited the design elements from the overall hotel complex into the restaurant’s design, and we architecturally articulated individual dining segments like bungalows defined by pergolas and curtains instead of walls, scattered in space and like a village with winding alleys, guiding the pathway towards the beach.
As the culmination of such a gastronomic complex, we designated the beach area where inspired by the broader context of the Mediterranean, we placed small tables on the sand, where guests can sit on cushions in the sunset, thus anticipating and inviting physical contact with the Mediterranean soil within the restaurant complex.
Among our restaurant projects in the Mediterranean, those located on elevations above the sea stand out. We defined the visual expression of one such restaurant with the rectangular geometry, and we articulated entire environments as modern terraces above the sea, whose spatial elements imitate natural pieces of stone and water, while their regular geometry connects with the architecture of the building where the restaurant is located.
When designing dining spaces as sort of seaside vistas and panoramic areas, we strive to create interventions with natural materials and textiles, instead of masonry structures, we utilise the lightness of architecture to mimic the airy characteristics of the environment, such as breezes and waves, which are woven into our design through light textures and organic forms.
Mountain hunt for gastronomic delight
Contrary to designing in Mediterranean contexts, where our design is focused on exteriors and shaping gentle textures that communicate with the surface of the sea or the natural ground of sandy beaches, designing in mountain contexts is determined by creating appealing warm shelters, which, responding to cold exterior conditions, create cosy and warm environments of leisure.
When reconstructing a hotel in the mountains, we paid special attention to the restaurant as one of the most frequented spaces, not only visited by hotel guests. In architectural design, we were inspired by the modernist character of the building’s architecture but also by the central fireplace as a vernacular element of mountain architecture, and through our design, we created an environment where these characteristics meet in a completely new expression.
Using white colour as a base that connects the interior with the snowy exteriors, and orienting tables towards tall windows surrounding the restaurant, we formed an airy space with a central core around a circular hearth, which in black colour communicates with window profiles and becomes a symbolic and visual accent of the space.
In contrast to the metal and glass elements of the restaurant, we introduced wooden cladding and furniture as warm elements into the design, as well as two symmetrically positioned branches that give the impression of the exterior entering the interior space from the outdoor woods.
Pujo Designer Restaurants
Working in completely different spatial contexts, we have created a unique design process that responds to the demands of designing hospitality venues. In this way, not only do we fulfil the functional requirements for food preparation through the architecture of the spaces, but by weaving the spaces with specific characteristics of their locations, we create photogenic environments that, like stage sets, shape moments of leisure and become places guests gladly return to.
