Open Studio designs izakaya-style restaurant with "half-dipped dumpling" lamp
Local firm Open Studio has created a gigantic fibreglass dumpling to illuminate and beckon visitors into Dumpling Darlings, a small-plates restaurant in Singapore's New Bahru shopping centre.
The studio looked to traditional Japanese izakayas when designing the restaurant for New Bahru, a dining and shopping location in an old, breeze-block-clad modernist school.
"These izakaya very often spill out onto the street, and are recognisable for their compact seating tucked beneath low retractable eaves," Jax Tan, who co-founded Open Studio with Lam Jun Nan, told Dezeen.
"That blurred boundary between the street and the restaurant is what we found most interesting and sought to interpret for Dumpling Darlings."
This inspiration can mainly be seen in the design of Dumpling Darlings' roof, which is made from corrugated perforated steel in a dark red hue and sits low over the front of the 100-square-metre restaurant.
"The lightweight roof became our primary architectural gesture, angled low to create the sense of roadside enclosure while defining the shopfront," Tan said. "Our goal was to capture the feeling of being at the izakaya, rather than the look of one."
A gigantic, pale-red dumpling lamp hangs from the ceiling and peeps through the izakaya's roof to illuminate the restaurant's outdoor seating space and tempt customers craving dumplings.
"In traditional izakayas, traditional Japanese akachōchin, red paper lanterns, are hung outside as welcome signs," Tan explained.
"We didn't reproduce the lantern literally, but imagined that the dumpling could be a similar beacon beckoning dumpling seekers," she continued.
"The oversized fibreglass dumpling is half dipped into a roof cut-out, providing a moment of levity against an otherwise disciplined tectonic interior."
Open Studio used plywood with metal joints for the booths, tables and surfaces at the restaurant, contrasting the metal roof.
It also designed new furniture especially for Dumpling Darlings – a set of custom chairs made by local furniture makers Gamar Furniture that Tan said follow the "tectonic character" of the interior.
"We see the furniture as an extension of the interior architecture, so it made sense to design it alongside the space rather than furnish it afterwards," she explained.
The pieces were created to occupy as little space as possible and were designed around the restaurant's specific proportions.
"The tables and chairs were conceived as a bespoke family of pieces that could merge and separate to suit different casual group settings," Tan continued. "Because the restaurant is so compact, every dimension was carefully deliberated."
Open Studio used deep red as the primary hue for the restaurant's interior, which is accented by its warm plywood tones.
"The palette is drawn from the feeling of a warmly lit street," Tan said. "Together with diffused lighting, neon accents and custom rice paper pendants, the palette evokes the glow of a Japanese street at night."
Open Studio also worked with local maker Like Lights to create textured rice-paper pendant lights to illuminate the outdoor seats.
Other projects from the studio that have been featured on Dezeen include a former school hall at New Bahru, which it turned into a pickleball court. The studio was shortlisted in the residential interior (small) category of Dezeen Awards last year.
The photography is by Johnston Lim.
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