Saturday 20 February 2010

Tom Dixon: Circus Restaurant London



I went to a restaurant yesterday which has recently opened in London with what seemed an amazing concept of having burlesque dancers performing on the very same table guests are having their dinner. Designed by Tom Dixon, the space certainly reflects his signature work. For me personally the best part is the entrance: no sign of the name of the restaurant, quite intriguing and secretive.
Once you enter through the steel doors, you find yourself in a reception area of amazing patterns running along the walls as well as a led lit signage cut out of perspex on one side. Its dark, with only the lights from the Circus sign reflecting from the shiny wall design, you can't wait to see whats inside. Perfect, just like the feeling before entering a circus tent.
The interior strongly reflects patterns and elements of drama and show, and once the open kitchen's 'windows' start closing leaving covers with two images of eyes, the show begins. It lasted from 5 -6 min, a lady in a corset performed with fire on the long table (see image above) and then everything went back to normal. The table naturally has to leave quite a wide gap for the dancers to walk through, which, when the show is not on, creates a quite wide separation between the guests sitting opposite. The kind of gap where with the busy noise, you would by no means hear what your friend has to say sitting opposite you, yet again depends who that is, it might come as a good design solution.
Some parts of the design, especially the corners of the rooms felt in some way not thoroughly thought out. As the whole of the design is very theatrical, it might have been a good idea to leave them plain black, yet they all seemed to have some strangely misplaced 'tacky' items to draw your attention to. Such as the twirling cones illuminating with colors as they turn in the lounge and the chandelier made out of round disks of shell (the type you buy on the beach as souvenirs for your grandmother) accompanied with a strange doormat hanging on the wall. Interestingly enough, although the restaurant was fully booked, our food came in an average of 10 to 15 min, the quality of it being as expected from something served in that amount of time.

Images from http://www.contemporist.com.

2 comments:

  1. That's an impressive design!
    Their details reminds me of a company I found the other day, Boca do Lobo. Their furniture designs are like art pieces: http://www.bocadolobo.com/.
    Love your Blog! Keep posting!

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  2. Hey Thanks!!! Love the link to the furniture you sent me! Its also a lot like the David Gill collection of decorative art pieces i have posted before!

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