First established in 1998, the Chubby Girl’s Noodle Shop in Beijing worked with Office AIO to recreate an authentic experience of street dining back in its home city, Chongqing.
Drawing inspirations from various artists' works, the design manifests the city’s physical and cultural traits - its undulating landscape and recent rapid urbanisation - with layering and consistency, simulating the dynamism of casual noodle dining spread across the city hill steps. Its re-interpretation and overhaul stays true to the owners’ and the food’s origin, reopening the shop with an elevation that offers a cultural and spatial experience beyond the taste of noodles.
Originally established in Chongqing City, Chengdu, China, in 1998, Chubby Girl’s Noodle Shop has always known for serving the locals authentic spicy noodles, which are a quintessential part of the city’s food culture, with outstanding flavours and honest services. In 2015, our clients brought the brand to the heart of Beijing, and quickly became the one and only “go-to” noodle shop that offers uncompromising taste of southwest China.
The Client came to OFFICE AIO with intent to overhaul the shop’s image from one that just happen to sell delicious noodles, to a totality with an interior atmosphere that could only be found appropriate enjoying Chongqing noodles in.
OFFICE AIO drew inspirations from works of photographers Tim Franco, Nadav Kander, and Mark Horn. It documents people’s daily life with the multilayered verticality of the city’s urbanisation and natural landscape as the background.
The 150sqm space was rationally dissected into three zones: a 55sqm section across the entire width at the back of the space as main kitchen, joined by a 15sqm section as dessert and beverage kitchen connecting to a street-facing window, and the remaining 80sqm as dining area. Multiple “windows” were punctured through the internal walls between the two kitchens and the dining area, creating an extremely efficient and systematic serving flow for the busy restaurant (with a 6-minute-per-seat refresh rate).
Chubby Girl’s Noodle Shop is designed with multiple platforms in black/grey/white terrazzo to build up undulating heights across the space. Built-in tables are also cast in-situ with the same terrazzo mix. The varying table lengths, their seemingly scattered positioning, and folding stools commonly used by food stalls, give the patrons a sense of street dining along the sloped cityscape distinctive to Chongqing City.
OFFICE AIO also strategically rearranged the extensive amount of MEP pipework in its ceiling space for the storeys above and some existing beams and columns to the scheme’s advantage. With the addition of neon light tubes highlighting the outlines of the exaggerated “exposed concrete structure”, and full-height “foggy” mirrors surrounding the dining area, the candid sense of the urban jungle and its exuberant nightlight experience is fully rendered and delivered.
Team:
Design: OFFICE AIO
Photographer: Yiqing Gao
