The “Flagman” restaurant-cafe is located in the Ring-shaped Park bordering the small center of the capital of Armenia - Yerevan.
This complex was implemented in 3 phases. The initial phase was designed in 2002 as an open-air cafe. During the second phase, an adjacent zone with sofas has been added. The final phase has been completed in February 2019. It is designed as a restaurant with transforming storefronts, blending with an outside sitting area in the warm season and at the same time by providing an operating possibility in the winter.
The major challenge of this project was finding a concept to adapt the new restaurant addition to the existing cafe infrastructure, which existed and been operating on the site, and to design the new restaurant by merging the footprint between the existing trees and the park alley. In the meantime, it was requested by the clients to adhere the design concept to the sailing boat theme, as a main inspiration for the entire complex.
The restaurant pavilion is designed as a sample of park architecture with a panoramic view of the park and the rest of the cafe. The pavilion contains a spacious trading hall with a bar and a small kitchen and serving area. The main entrance lobby has been designed as a completely transparent facade in order to ensure a harmonious transition from the park to the interior of the pavilion, thus blending the existing trees into an interior detail.
The structure of the pavilion is a rigid metal frame composed of metal columns located around the perimeter, connected by H-shaped beams, which serve as the basis for fixing the two-layered tensile structure and folding storefronts, in addition supporting the ventilation ducts. The central column is positioned in the middle, where the upper part of the tensile structure is supported, also serving as the basis for the vertical gardening of the restaurant hall.
Given the average annual temperature difference of about 60 degrees (from -20 to +40), a two-layer tensile structure was used, the inner layer of which was thermally insulated. Also, the choice of this design provided a feeling of lightness and space in the hall itself, thereby minimizing the use of a large number of metal structures to cover this space, as well as simulating the subject of a sailboat as a general concept of the complex.
In place of the kitchen pavilion, there was previously another smaller pavilion, which also had an underground floor. The difficulty was to increase the area of the existing pavilion without changing the underground floor, for which the new pavilion was planted on the existing basement floor. In addition to the restaurant, in the final phase, the territory of the zone with sofas of the open-air cafe was also enlarged along the existing park alley and was allocated a zone for locating a children's playground. It should be noted that the complex, which is very popular in the warm season, has already proved its worth in the cold months.
