At the Hangzhou Kerry Center on the bank of the West Lake, YEAP LAB has created a club style trendy rice noodles store for FAT PHO. With the cool and dynamic elements of streets and trendy culture, it actively attracts the emerging generation consumption power to gather in real space.
In a scarce and precious land that is only two or three hundred meters away from the West Lake in a straight line, Hangzhou Kerry Center has refined consumption scenes that are suitable for its own literary temperament, creating personalized and fun dining and social moments for the public with a fusion of Eastern and Western style restaurants.
The first store of FAT PHO in Hangzhou has settled in Kerry Center. This brand, which originated from Australia, has the desire to “offer innovative and delicious Vietnamese cuisine to the Chinese market”. By refining Vietnamese, Chinese and Australian ingredients and spices, dedication and innovation of two generations, it has launched a fantastic and gorgeous map of Vietnamese cuisine for Chinese diners.
Coral red, as a brand color, symbolizes the color of fresh ingredients and fire, bringing its own publicity and energy aura. This is not only a place for Vietnamese food collection, but also a place for people’s gatherings, barbecue, drinking, and social.
Red spreads from the entrance to the interior walls and the floor, becoming the main tone of the space. Against the calm and textured black, it exudes trendy and dynamic vitality from the inside out. A slurping rice noodles social interaction under sensual excitement is about to start.
Misplacement of Theme Scenes
LEON, the Owner-Principal of FAT PHO, grew up in a multicultural background, which makes him have great inclusiveness of trendy culture. His ideal Vietnamese rice noodles store has an authentic taste, but its design style can travel around the world.
YEAP LAB transfers the “street young soul” temperament exuded by the Owner-Principal to spatial design, subverting the ideal of traditional rice noodles stores and interpreting spatial stories with the theme of “Disco”. Young, fashion, and new trend evoke infinite vitality. While releasing imagination and creativity, it just opens the dining mode of “Pho in the day and wine in the evening”. This is a deep consideration based on the transmission of brand cultural genes, and also a forward-looking perception for predicting future business conditions.
Urban people always search for a place to comfort their body and mind in a state of hunger. The symmetrical and open layout of the operation room allows diners to witness every step of the cooking process firsthand. Automated slicing, noodle boiling machines, and other equipment cooperate with manual cutting and seasoning in an orderly manner, and the soup bottom cooked on site emits a rich aroma. The efficient dining process of the kitchen is like a ceremonial performance, allowing diners to sit down and enjoy it in expecting.
Emotional Brewing Under Lights and Colors Rendering
The spatial flow of rectangular-ambulatory-plane guides the physical and emotional dispersion of diners, stimulating personalized location choices and changes in psychological rhythm. The surrounding seats create a cohesive atmosphere, and the diners naturally show their active social emotions and consciousness. The one-way seats around the bar counter convey the interactive experience of the stage center.
Under several large blocks, the relaxation and strength of physical space are presented, and the psychedelic collision of light and color changes adhere to different forms, laying the impression tone of the brand space.
The smart lightbox is undoubtedly the visual focus and the king leading the trends in the space. Use the typical blue and purple color of Cyberpunk in the movie Blade Runner for reference, and guide the falling point of sight with hazy transition of dynamic gradient effect.
A cartoon image of the brand, a skater boy wearing a bamboo hat and holding a PHO, plays in a loop on the lightbox. As an extension element of the brand design, the dynamic visual content allows diners to establish a deeper connection with the FAT PHO brand during the meals.
The light belt above the bar counter and the ring light on the wall echoes each other. In the two dimming modes of day and night, it switches according to the dining scene, and then changes the field form and emotional expression.
The orange-red fluorescent slogan ” Slurp It like It’s hot ” and the character “發” keep flashing. The entire space uses futuristic technology lights, the collision and coexistence of cool and warm tones, and the changes in the rhythm of the light colors to wake the diners’ emotional changes. The free walls and the blurred apertures intersect with each other to build a journey of time and space beyond the sense of reality.
Multi-sense Touch
The scenes are juxtaposed and collaged under the theme, with scattered blocks, straight and curving lines, rich and light colors, and light and heavy materials arranged in harmony with each other. YEAP LAB cares about the wear resistance and time imprint of space furnishings after long-term use, presenting the silver gray of metal and stainless-steel materials in different forms and textures.
Large-scale and special-shaped mirror stainless steel plates are hung on the ceiling, and the gloss of the sense of technology gives the space an avant-garde, cutting-edge temperament, reflecting the scenes under the ceiling, the multi-dimensional layers of lights and colors and a picture of sense of abstract flow.
The cabinets and countertops in the operation room are also used in the dining space. The round shape of the tables and bars weakens the coldness of metal material, and the backrests of the bar chairs and sofas echo the theme color of the space with red. The highly customized furniture furnishings give a wonderful interpretation of the details, leaving an extraordinary feeling in each link of contact and interaction with people.
On the background walls of the sideboard cabinet and cashier area, the grille-shaped, polished stainless steel creates an ethereal texture, with overlapping arcs reflecting the surrounding light environment. The disco light ball with prism cutting edges is veiledly exposed in half, allowing for another exploration of the multi-dimensional space in vision.
When the rhythm of hip-hop music rises in ears, diners seem to be in another mirror space of the city, amplifying their perception scale in the interaction with the five feelings, six senses, and digital technology, and opening up interesting exploration of the unknown world.
The most daily meal is instantly pulled away from reality by the theme narrative, creating an infinite expansion of imagination in a limited space. The misplacement of the theme scenes melts the boundaries of the real space, and inspires the multiple collisions between taste buds and senses. Emotions and perceptions become the unique decorations in the space.
FAT PHO Hangzhou Kerry Center Store
Location Hangzhou Kerry Center
Area 165 square meters
Designer YEAP LAB
Design Team Chen Siyan, Cheng Xing, Kong Lingtong, Zhou Hang
Construction Shanghai East Garden Construction Decoration Co., Ltd.
Photos courtesy Raittliu
Siyan Chen – YEAP LAB Founder & Architect
Siyan previously worked at KPF Architecture and established YEAP LAB in Shanghai 2018, a design studio practices in different spatial projects of urban renewal, also providing multi- solutions in design and consulting service. Work with professionals in different fields to continuously explore the possibilities of future life and design. Siyan believe that curiosity about the unknown and contemplation of future life are the driving forces behind design.
