‘pearls & caviar’ is a restaurant on the site of the Shangri-La hotel in Abu Dhabi. It is placed in a solitaire building on the waterside of the river. The assignment was to make a fish restaurant as ‘a total art work’ including the corporate identity (name, logo, menu, business cards, website, advertisement), the landscape design, the interior, the tableware, the gadgets and the uniforms. This all designed from a ‘one concept’ philosophy. The client asked for a contemporary restaurant, which nevertheless represents the origins of the very region.
overall concept:
“pearls & caviar” represents the new Arabian lifestyle, a luxury fusion of east and west, black and white, occident and orient, light and shadow, the extrovert and the introvert, the intimacy and the view. The basic idea of the design of the restaurant has been to create an abstraction of the commonly used oriental forms and materials without loosing their richness. To achieve this the amount and the richness of the oriental patterns and forms which are found in traditional oriental spaces are kept but without color. All colors are replaced by either shades of black or shades of white- both in combination with silver. Therefore the restaurant is divided in two parts, which also gives it’s its name: ‘pearls’ and ‘caviar’.
‘pearls’: The ‘pearl’ part is represented in the terrace on level 1. The terrace is divided in 3 subspaces: the main terrace and two private terraces, which can be used separately. The pearl areas are extrovert spaces composed completely in shades of white and silver: The flooring is a big oriental carpet made of glass mosaic tiles in the white-silver color range. A circular bar made of polished stainless steel with a bar top of white marble is placed around the tower of the main terrace. White upholstered, deep lounge benches are placed along all borders of the single terraces and white sails cover each of them as sun protection and light diffuser.
‘caviar’: The ‘caviar restaurant’ is situated on level 0. It is an introvert and intimate space in the inside of the building composed completely in shades of black and silver: The flooring is a big oriental carpet made of glass mosaic tiles in the black-silver color range. The restaurant is divided in little intimate ‘chambers’ on the rim of the carpet separated by ball chain curtains and side tables made of wengé. On top of them Persian accessories are placed which function as light diffusers. Around the central tower a circular bench is placed upholstered in black leather. The back parts of the benches stretch over the full height of the wall of the tower. And a straight bar in stainless steel with black marble bar top.
The organic custom made tableware, the black respectively white uniforms both with its pearl accessories and the corporate identity follow the black-white-silver scheme of the pearls and caviar concept.
