The Meat & Wine Co. is warm, inviting and loves to entertain people like a good friend. It wants to be noticed.
Think about a restaurant in the same way you would think about a person. The people that you find most rewarding and tend to gravitate towards are often the ones you would describe as someone with a “great personality”. Restaurants are no different.
Drawing Inspiration for a Concept Design
The Meat & Wine Co. takes inspiration for its existing surroundings. Within the Zulu culture, water is known to be valuable asset. Not only is water considered sacred but the procession to collect water is a ritual. We take inspiration form the zenith of this procession and these cultural nuances to introduce the African Homestead.
Hollowed-out and dried, calabashes are a very typical household utensil across Africa. Traditionally, the calabash is used tohold water and store food. The reinterpretation of the traditional calabash used as a feature screens allows one to successfully articulate the spaces within the general dining area while bringing the design concept to life. This is intently done with breeze blocks use tohold wine bottles for multiple reasons such. In this case, the wine blocks allow for air flow but additionally grant some privacy and sound absorption catching the noise in the cylinder shape. Another bonus is they are structural so they can be used in area of framing for support. The use of bricks blocks are making a large comeback as an architectural issue for its decorative look, alternatively in this case, transforming an interior environment in a clever, yet a simple manner.
16 Oversized rope macramé pendants were made for the project. half of the pendants would be installed inside of the restaurant whilst the other half would be installed just in front of it in the open walkway. Individually wove and sculpted, each pendant weighs around 90kgs and uses over 2kms of rope to make each one. The size of the pendants is 2900mm tall by 1050mm Wide.The development for the unique pendant lights took about 5 months to develop and design.
The inspiration for The Meat & Wine Co is driven by strong African patterns and colours which culminate through multiple cultures. Blending this nostalgia and richness of Africa, with modern day innovation, we aim to achieve an elegant high end restaurant.
Our studio specializes in design for behaviour.
We have done so for almost 30 years and in this time we have learned a tremendous amount about how people behave naturally and instinctively within these social environments. We have learned the hard way that in order to design successful venues, we needed to place predictive human behaviour at the heart of what we do. We capture succinctly how most people behave most of the time in order to design spaces for the most joy and ultimately the most success. This assists us in capturing the spirit of place.