Blooming Restaurant: A Kaleidoscope of Space and Thoughts

Yi Chen and Muchen Zhang's Award-Winning Design Inspired by Transient Beauty

The Blooming Restaurant is not just a place to dine, but an immersive emotional experience. The design is centered around the theme of 'blooming thoughts'. The main medium for expressing the three-dimensional space is an explosive kaleidoscope of light and shadow hanging at the center of the ceiling. This centerpiece affects and controls the light and shadow, tone, and atmosphere of the entire space.

What makes this design different from others is its inspiration from the microscopic view of a flower. Through this lens, an ordinary flower is presented as a logical, abstract, and awe-inspiring image, akin to a kaleidoscope. This concept is brought to life using wood and black iron mesh, spread across 350 square meters.

The project was completed in July 2018 in Beijing, China. The design process involved a constant process of breaking down, restructuring, and renewing of living entities, much like the ceaseless turning of images in a kaleidoscope. This process mirrors the shifting and evolving meaning of life itself.

One of the challenges faced in this design was to present the kaleidoscope in a dynamic way in space. The prism reflects multiple spatial levels, enabling the users to have complex feelings and deeper emotional requirements for the space. The switching and changing images of light and shadow reflected by the prism from different angles, uncertain and unpredictable, release more colorful and wonderful space perceptions of different dimensions and evolving space orders.

The Blooming Restaurant design was awarded the Golden A' Interior Space, Retail and Exhibition Design Award in 2019. This prestigious award is granted to marvelous, outstanding, and trendsetting creations that reflect the designer's prodigy and wisdom. They are venerated products and bright ideas that advance art, science, design, and technology, embodying extraordinary excellence and significantly impacting the world with their desirable characteristics.

Yi Chen and Muchen Zhang's Blooming Restaurant is a testament to the power of design in creating immersive experiences. It's a space where architecture and poetry meet, creating a dialogue between the subconscious and the physical world. It's a design that truly blooms.