Situated inside the old district of Shanghai, Da Niao YAKITORI is a restaurant branch that resides along Fenyang Road. The design seeks to capture the characteristics of the historical settlements, integrated with the ‘home’ concept campaigned by the restaurant, offering the urban residents a contemporary and bustling place for dinner and late supper. Located at the intersection of Fuxing Middle Road and Fenyang Road in Shanghai, the site is nested under the shade of French Platanus trees amidst a street with pleasant dimensions and slowly forwarded cars. The building surroundings trace back to different ages and constitute a contrasting urban scenario to the road. The site consists of irregular shapes and rough outlines reflected in the floor plan, with the storefront lying close to the pedestrians, occupying a small opening and profound depth. The staircase must be reserved behind the entrance, connecting the First Floor bar.
Da Niao YAKITORI is mainly open in the evening hours. Apart from dining, the restaurant wishes to provide a certain emotional appease to the customers. Considering through the floor plan, a circular counter becomes the core of the design. Approximately 20 seats are allocated in front of the teppanyaki plate, bringing together the customers into a circle that embraces the open-plan kitchen. The circular counter sits in front of the road, allowing the cooking procedure to be see-through and merged into the street panorama.
The bamboo ceiling seemingly floats above the counter, corresponding to a ‘roof’ that gathers around the customers, reinforced by fire and charcoal, creating a ‘home’ atmosphere in the center. The inclined ‘roof’ has covered up the pipes overlapped above, which concealed the cook hood, ventilation, and air-conditioning system. By utilizing the irregular-shaped floor plan, two ‘red lodges’ are inserted into the site, intersecting with the circular island in the middle. One became a flexible dining area, accommodating the demands of the various types of customers, and another was planned into the staircase that stepped into the First Floor bar. The interval between the lodges remains as aisle, storage units, and supplementary space. The storefront is an extension of the interior. Just as we try to extend the indoor activities to become part of the street view, the design proposal for the storefront is an explicit translation of the interior arrangement.
The primary material adopted for the ‘circular island’ is laminated bamboo. Divided into separate unit, each section is sixty centimeters wide, which suits an adult seat. Most of the panels are prefabricated into modular units, reducing the on-site construction work. The color match is made up of light and dark. The lighter tint derives from the prefabricated bamboo, with the section cut visible, while the darker parts are solid wooden strips, complementing margins, edges, and segmentation on site. The lower part of the ‘red lodge’ employed waterproof and stain-resistant red granite, with the upper part textured paint aligned in the same color. The ceiling, which contains intricated equipment and pipes, is entirely sprayed in black, without any suspended panel.
