2024 Galleries
The Spark Gallery pages are one of our most popular design destinations, with thousands of visitors each year. Check out some of the latest Spark entries, in the galleries below.
Galleries // 2019 Spark:Space // Taste of Machi —Japanese Restaurant
Taste of Machi —Japanese Restaurant
Winner - Silver
Competition: Spark:Space
Designer: Joye Chuang - Design Director
Design Type: restaurant
Company / Organization / School: Nong Mu Design Engineering Company
Website: https://www.facebook.com/NongMu
Team Members: Joye Chuang & Celine Liou
The reinterpretation of rustic Japanese style into a fried steak house adopts the alley space of the Japanese “machi.” To a certain degree, the revival and recreation send the restaurant to the age of small and beautiful. The timber framework, square street blocks, and the tightly arranged seating present the vividness of a legendary restaurant. The materiality of the surrounding old objects—shingles, bamboo screen, polished old concrete floor, hexagonal floor tile, encaustic wall tiles, white diamond countertop, dark green dining table, and rusted panels—makes up the charm only available to the a legendary restaurant. The appearance of the old house is rearranged with rows and ranks of the woodwork on the first- and second-floor facade. The large tree with old building registers the front yard, where the interspersed white gravel, stone lantern, and plants introduce the image of karesansui (dried landscape) under the old trusses above the entrance space. The blue-and-purple manner landscape of endless mountains and rivers on the wall meets the five-meter-long seating. The group of flying cranes in the painting echoes the Japanese legend of climbing up to the peak that goes beyond the restaurant space.
