Teng by Nature Times Art Design

Project Credits & Specs:

• Interior Designers: Nature Times Art Design Co., Ltd.
• Photographs: Shao Feng, He Chuan
• Location: One Avenue, Shenzhen, China
• Area: 280 m²
• Year: 2020

Teng is an exquisite, classy restaurant sited in the heart of Shenzhen, mainly offering Japanese & French teppanyaki. Based on the context of the times and the city, it redefines “fine dining”, by abandoning complicated, sedate design languages but incorporating a more open attitude instead. The blending of elegant French food and delicate Japanese cuisine improves guests’ emotional experience while dining. The design creates a distinctive space to evoke guests’ memories and emotions and endows the concept of “fine dining” that blends Japanese and French delicacy with concrete expressions, to enhance sensory experiences.

To create a tranquil experiential dining space in the bustling city, a completely sealed “box” form was conceived, which not only prevents disturbance from outside but also accommodates ordinary yet beautiful moments and reshapes a lively isolated spatial scene. The space breaks the homogenous interpretation of “luxury”, and appropriately integrates it into a simplistic, natural setting, echoing the original taste of food. Besides, the focus on precious food is shifted to people’s emotional needs.

The space provides a multi-dimensional sensory feast, full of details. The circulation route creates romantic encounters for the guests, and takes them to “an illusionary urban wonderland”. The elements of flowing water, stones, plants, starry sky, and full moon are merged into the limited space in a random manner, bringing in beautiful natural sceneries. The design leverages ecological metaphor to create rich, immersive scenes that simulate growing nature, helpfully removing people’s tiredness from daily busy life and subtly mixing reality and virtuality.

Private dining rooms are organized along the circulation route in a scattered way. The translucent screens made from Japanese shoji paper with natural grains create implicit partitions. Human figures and shadows of objects are indistinctly revealed through the partitions. The water-dropping chain, bamboo woven artwork, and various patterns and dynamic rhythms arouse infinite imagination about nature. Art installations elaborately arranged in the space establish a connection between people and objects. The perfect integration of fine food, art, and design produces a unique experience.

The space adopts different materials and atmospheres to interpret the aesthetic of collision and fusion, through media such as air and water. Soft tones, lighting effects, or the transition of light reveal a warm, ideal, and comfortable ambiance, contrasting with solid materials, grains, and natural textures. Modernity surreality collides yet fuses with traditional exquisiteness, and the gentle, soft touch echoes the rough, simplistic structure. The light, ethereal tones give the spatial narratives a sense of layering and emotion and add subtle complexity to ordinary corners.

The combination of the static and the dynamic, the old and the new, the implicit and conspicuous, tradition and modernity creates a wonderful, memorable experience, and guides diners to take a break from daily routine, enabling them to enjoy socializing and companionship in an emotional, immersive space. The restaurant is more a carrier of the story than a backdrop, accommodating various emotions and memories. Every bite of food is filled with surprise, stimulating pleasant feelings.

The project description is provided by the designers.