WEEKLY FEATURE: International Restaurant Design Series

Last month we mailed members with the offer to attend Art13, a brand new art exhibition held at Olympia the first weekend of March. Several of us from the office went to the viewing and it provoked very lively discussion the following Monday morning as to what each of us loved…and what we hated! Art can truly divide people being so incredibly subjective. This set us to thinking that restaurant design was the same. What some of us believed to be a wonderful interior in a restaurant, others felt was too modern, or old fashioned or uncomfortable.

We at Design Restaurants feel that food is just half the story when you are enjoying a memorable dining experience. The mood invoked by a restaurant is intrinsically linked to excellence in design, and we are always keen to hear about and feature on the site, restaurants that have truly inspirational design. Therefore to stimulate, and celebrate, we are launching a new series on our blog where each week we will feature a restaurant from around the globe that we feel features stand-out design – and we’d love to hear your views. This week…

TWISTER – Kiev, Ukraine

This two story restaurant captures the upward pull of a tornado  unleashing and taming the forces of nature – with undulating banquettes, armchairs recalling pine cones and ceiling lights that mimic pendulous drops of rain that never fall. The bar area is made of clusters of wooden sticks,resembling an avant-garde bird’s nest, representing graphically abstracted natual phenomena that embraces guests instead of lashing them.

The designers, Sergey Makhno and Vasiliy Butenko really captured the essence of a twister with storm cloud chairs, earth tones and wood and stone surfaces to give visitors a sense of removal from the world in the eye of a protective storm. The warm-toned color palette conveys a sense of calm throughout, in spite of the avian connotations and air-borne allusions. Maybe the food’s good too.

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