Junzi Kitchen New Havenis the first restaurant of the fast-casual concept featuring hand-made Northern Chinese Chun-Bing and Noodle Bowl. A proper space is essential to a good dining experience. In traditional Chinese life, people change their food menu seasonally. It’s believed that the color, smell, taste of certain food achieve the perfection at a proper time of a year, in a proper environment setting. The tradition of having Chun-Bing at early spring sets the tune of the restaurant. The design is seeking the color of germination and the texture of growth.
The Junzi Kitchen locates at the center of the town of New Haven, adjacent to Yale Campus. The site is narrow and long, with a storefront measuring only 10 feet. The strategy is to maintain spatial transparency by consolidating functions to the sides of the space, then create visual connectivity between inside and outside. A series of pendant lights are arranged in alignment spanning the whole restaurant, shaping the long space into a visual integrity. Green shoots and leaves of vegetation stretching from the pendants, soften people’s perception of the space. Menu boards are housed by the hanging lights.
While the formal language of the design is kept at its maximum simplicity, the design team took great effort in material selection and control of details. Joints between components, wood grain orientation and edge treatment of wood panel are all carefully controlled. The design vocabulary tends to reveal the nature of materials, at the same time articulates the connection between them. The design manifests the belif thatbeauty is not necessarily made out of costly material, but derive from sensibilityin simple life.
