The screen at the end of this hall is three storeys of pointed arch filled with a mirrored geometric pattern. Most projects use that language as a border or an inlay. Here it is the wall.
Scaling ornament up changes what it does. It stops being decoration and becomes structure you can see through.
Context and Materiality
Traditional geometric work is usually sized to the hand - a panel, a door, a screen you stand next to. Blown up to the full height of a double-volume dining hall, the same language behaves differently. The lines thicken until they read as framing rather than as pattern, and the gaps between them become windows. From the floor of the restaurant you get a filtered view of the street outside, broken into fragments by the geometry, with daylight coming through the openings and reflections bouncing off the mirrored faces.
Interior Atmosphere
Everything around the screen was kept comparatively plain so that the scale reads. The columns are broad and simple, carrying only a narrow band of pattern at the capital and the base. Ceilings are flat, with recessed strips rather than a coffered treatment. Suspended lanterns hang at a consistent height right across the room, which gives the eye a horizontal line to measure the arches against - without them the height is hard to judge. Seating in deep teal was chosen to sit low in tone against the pale stone and metal above, so the bottom of the room stays quiet and the top of it does the work.
Published in Awards • Apr 2026
