Introduction
From 1985 to 1991 Rick Mather designed a series of restaurants for the Zen chain of Chinese restaurants including three restaurants in London, Hong Kong and Montreal. The client wanted to establish a new niche for upmarket Chinese food and wanted an architectural setting to reflect the quality of the food and service.
The restaurants all used advanced and innovative techniques of glazing and featured glass water features and furniture also designed by Rick Mather.
Zen Hong Kong is a five hundred seat restaurant located in the basement of a shopping podium of a vast tower block. Massive structural columns puncture the space accompanied by an exposed concrete ceiling. The design does not avoid these elements and the existing structure is left expressed. Shallow glazed bowls suspended from the ceiling on slender steel cables rise and twist across the restaurant in both section and plan, dripping water from one to another. The facade of the restaurant onto the shopping mall is a curved glazed wall.
Architectur Interiere CREE
Chinese Cooking
Oct 89
Designers Journal
East meets West
Jose Manser - Oct 89