Projects

High-profile, Spanish designer Jaime Hayón has just completed his latest project – the refurbishment of the restaurant, Le Sergent Recruteur, which, living by the slogan ‘live, eat and rest’ and recalling France’s legendary brasseries, has just reopened its doors in the heart of Paris, on the Îsle Saint-Louis.Hayón’s project aims to respect the history and spirit of one of Paris’s oldest eateries, which has strong roots in the Napoleonic era. To this end, the designer has made use of furniture, lighting and Aubusson tapestries woven by Amsterdam’s Museum of Textiles, jugs and other decorative features, created exclusively for the restaurant’s new decor. Each piece and element here also strives to enhance the cuisine of talented, French chef Antonin Bonnet, who oversees the kitchen of the French capital’s gastronomic mecca.The restaurant is on two floors, and the decor of its lower-ground floor contrasts with that of the floor above. Its interiors combine a Nordic style with unmistakable Hayón touches, from enormous Venetian mirrors to a multi-armed chandelier from his Copacabana collection for Barcelona-based lighting company Metalarte. Found by the restaurant’s entrance, the bar is decorated in pale colours, has a wooden floor, white walls and a ceiling with original, wooden beams. In the main dining area, tables with pale, laminated wood, redolent of 50s American diners, stand out in particular. Displayed against one pristine white wall are porcelain pieces designed by Hayón. There’s a private dining room in the lower-ground floor, reached by spectacularly lit stairs flanked by glass partitions. With its vaulted ceiling, this floor creates an atmosphere that’s cosy yet also airy, thanks to its white walls and unimposing furniture.The resulting space is appealingly simple, harmonious and inviting. Its custom-made furniture, stone walls, wooden ceilings painted white, curved contours, forest green upholstery and details picked out in gold make for a snug yet elegant space – and result in a magical atmosphere that fuses this Spanish designer’s flair with the innovative, culinary approach of the restaurant’s highly regarded, French chef.

Spanish company Ezcaray Internacional’s chairs grace the auditorium of the Philharmonic concert hall of the city of Krasnoyarsk, in the southern part of central Russia. The concert hall of the Krasnoyarsk Philharmonic symphony orchestra is one of this city’s most iconic venues, so the design of its interiors needed to reach the same high standard. While choosing materials, equipment and furniture for the project, the company opted for pieces that convey a sense of robustness and grandeur yet are also practical and functional. The Russian company Eurocreslo won the bid to supply 1,800 auditorium chairs which Ezcaray Internacional specially manufactured for the hall. For the project, the Spanish company proposed a natural modification of the Feup chair – the armchair chosen to furnish the concert hall. Elements of it were subtly tweaked, namely the shape of it sides and armrests, even though the chair’s original comfortable, light-looking design was retained. One of its most eye-catching features is its red upholstery which, moreover, changes tone and shimmers, bringing a sense of movement and vibrancy to the look of the room. One advantage of Feup is that it’s not too bulky. It’s particularly suited to environments that demand excellent acoustic properties, as an acoustic panel can be added to it in situations where the design of the acoustics box demands getting the best out of the space’s remaining features. Ezcaray Internacional has been manufacturing seating for assembly rooms, auditoria, cinemas and theatres for over 100 years. Its chairs can be found in leisure and education centres in Spain, Russia, Germany, Portugal, Malaysia, Singapore, the US and Finland, among other countries. One of the company’s most iconic projects has been its furnishing of the National Theatre of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

Its interior, dreamt up by Barcelona-based design studio Dear Design and Architecture (Dear for short), is inspired by the Mediterranean – an idea inextricably linked with Custo’s origins. The shop’s organic, asymmetric fittings aim to evoke the Mediterranean’s winding, rugged coastline. The materials used – including wood lacquered white, glass, shiny, stainless steel and boards of textured wood in two shades of grey – harmonise perfectly with the innovative and sophisticated style of Custo Barcelona’s clothing. The shop’s interior reinforces Custo Barcelona’s brand identity, its background and DNA – and, what’s more, creates spectacular effects of light, shadows, textures and relief patterns. Dear was founded in 2005 by Ignasi Llauradó and Eric Dufourd. Its prime aim is to add to its members and collaborators’ professional experience two core, connected values of contemporary design: functionality and aesthetic pleasure. This studio has created interiors for such top-end fashion brands as the group LVMH, Burberry, Nike, Munich and Escada, and collaborated with such prestigious brands as Audi and Bombay Sapphire.

Jaleo is the Washington restaurant of world-renowned Spanish chef José Andrés. Jaleo is a Spanish word meaning fun, commotion and hustle and bustle, and has nice, positive connotations. Such adjectives can also be applied to the interior design of this restaurant, dreamt up by Barcelona-based architecture studio Capella García. The venue’s interior is inspired by the typically Spanish food, tapas. A related word is ‘tapeo’, which consists of lots of small mouthfuls, is cleverly mirrored by the small nooks also found here. One, in the entrance, is very casual; another more formal one features traditional, reserved tables, and a third, more relaxed one, is designed for eating at the bar. According to Juli Capella, one of the project’s designers, ‘We wanted to create an environment that’s nice, sociable, welcoming – as Spanish people are – and brimming with colour and daring shapes, with touches of craziness and irony and a dash of Mediterranean surrealism.’ All the furniture used was created by some of Spain’s most talented contemporary designers and manufactured by Spanish companies. These pieces are innovative and of the moment, and demonstrate the mix in Spain of rich of craftsmanship and more cutting-edge mass-produced design. Notable among these pieces are Javier Mariscal’s Green chairs for Mobles 114, RS’s football tables, Patricia Urquiola’s Nub chairs for Andreu World, Estadi Hac’s Tea chairs for Sancal, the highly original Vespa Cavallet stool designed by Emiliana Design Studio, armchairs, benches and tables created by Francesc Rifé for Ziru and Lottus stools in the bar area, dreamt up Lievore Altherr Molina and made by Enea. As for its lighting, the restaurant boasts Marti Guixé’s Booklamp light made by Luján y Sicilia, Jordi Vilardell’s Slim pendant lights for Vibia and, in the entrance, the spectacular Agatha Lamp, designed by Luis Eslava for LZF. The floor was designed by Capella García Architects and features a design of coloured tears reproduced with the help of hydraulic tiles (meaning the tile’s pigment is hydraulically pressed into its surface), a century-old technique connected to traditional mosaics, which, on this occasion, has been fabricated by Huguet, a company in Mallorca. An undulating bench has been placed in the bar area, while the top of the bar is made of the quartz-derived material, Silestone in a shade called Toffee. One wall to the side and part of the ceiling are decorated with hexagonal acoustic panels from Sancal’s Tea product range. Several artworks by Spanish artists are also to be found here, such as a bull’s head covered with a mask, a piece by Mikel Urmeneta, owner of the Spanish homeware shop Klukuxumuxu. And finally, the company Kriskadecor supplied some curtains inspired by traditional ones found in Spanish villages. Jaleo definitively represents a slice of the Spanish lifestyle in Washington. It’s a place to taste the best tapas and experience the best contemporary Spanish interior design.

This month, we highlight Spanish company Aparici’s project, the Lisbon restaurant Assuka, one of the Portuguese city’s most iconic hotspots of leisure and nightlife. It’s a gently organic design which exalts the taste for minimalism and all things special – resulting in an unmistakable style. Its success is all down to a special material, Aparici’s Novocemento Slim Up, which allows designers to create countless, highly arresting, creative configurations as well as exclusive decors with a very distinctive look. Slim Up is a large-format piece that adds 3D elements to vertical surfaces. Fired twice and made of a strong natural material, Slim Up is highly durable despite its large size. This product presaged a major trend we observed earlier this year at Cevisama, the trade fair for ceramic tiles and surfaces held in Valencia, where Spanish companies unveiled many similar products, all boasting 3D qualities and targeted chiefly at architects and interior designers. Based in Castellón in eastern Spain, Aparici is a leading Spanish company in its field. With a presence in over 100 countries, it offers exclusive products with truly cutting-edge technological and innovative features. It has two factories which allow for very high productivity. Its most notable products are its high-tech porcelain which comes in an extensive range of sizes suitable for both indoor and outdoor use, and its technical, white-body surface with its Slimline. Aparici goes the extra mile when undertaking public projects. It’s extremely professional when it comes to the benefits it offers in terms of technology, innovation, design and service.

The Basque Culinary Center is an institution set up in the Basque Country to protect the future of cookery as an innovative field and as somewhere for qualified professionals in the gastronomic field to train at a high level. Its HQ, in the technological park of San Sebastián, is an amazing building, designed by VAUMM Architects. Its interior features three of company Enea’s best-known collections: Lottus by Lievore Altherr Molina, Oh! by Gabriel Teixidó and Eina by Josep Lluscá. Also gracing the building is Enea’s Sisar tables – a new design – created at the request of the client for a particular purpose. For Enea, based in Guipúzcoa, in the Basque Country, the project entailed adapting to the needs of the client in terms of products and colours. Specifically, this involved giving its Lottus chairs and Oh! tables and armchairs an aluminium-coloured, matt lacquer finish, while the Eina chairs on castors were specially made to conform to the UNE 1729-1 guideline (which proposes an optimal ergonomic height ) as well as the aforementioned Sisar tables. Enea’s products are dotted around the building – in the training rooms, a multifunctional hall, the library as well as in communal areas. Teaching staff, students and visitors will all therefore be able to benefit from the comfort, elegance and warmth of these three well-known designs. Seventeen chairs with sled legs from the Oh! collection as well as 319 grey polypropylene Eina chairs on castors and 102 Sisar tables – special, multifunctional tables in melamine and white aluminium – grace the teaching rooms and areas. And eight armchairs with sled legs from the Oh! collection now furnish the relaxation and communal areas of one hall, while another 12 can be found in the VIP room. In addition, 306 white polypropylene Lottus chairs and 37 upholstered ones are used in the meeting room, director’s room and in various corridors. Finally, also in the corridors, are 17 tables with foldaway tops and six white cupboards with folding doors. Enea is a company founded in 1984 with the clear aim of offering contemporary designs suitable for all types of spaces (private spaces, offices, hotels, auditoria and conference halls). Since it was established, this company has maintained its position as one of the leading European manufacturers of chairs for public areas, thanks to its collaborations with such high-profile and experienced designers as Josep Lluscá, Gabriel Teixidó and Lievore Alhterr Molina.