An Oasis of Calm Inside a Bustling Shopping Mall
In Hong Kong’s New Town Plaza, Minus Workshop’s Dab-pa is a Peking and Sichuan restaurant ensconced in greenery. Here, interior designer Kevin Yiu shares more
Design Anthology : How did you first meet the client?
Kevin Yiu: Taste Gourmet Group is one of our long-term clients. They own and operate over 40 restaurants and we have worked with them on everything from design to operations over the years.
What was their brief to you for this project?
The restaurant is in a mall, so they wanted something that would be welcoming for people passing by and also conducive to intimate gatherings. The overall size of the space is 208 square meters, so there was ample room to meet the requirement for private event spaces. The restaurant is named after a beautiful, scenic area in Chengdu and serves a more unique version of traditional Sichuan cuisine.
What’s great about the neighbourhood and what makes the location unique?
The restaurant is in one of the busiest shopping arcades in Hong Kong’s New Town Plaza mall in Sha Tin. It’s located on the ground floor in a corner but sited near a communal passage where there’s daylight and greenery.
How did you approach the project — what design references or narrative did you try to incorporate into the space?
Because there’s greenery outside the restaurant, we wanted to create a sense of interconnectivity between the outdoors and indoors. The concept was to create a journey to a garden.
We teamed up with Botanic Union to develop a green art wall. The idea was to evoke the sensation of being inside a Chinese garden, with lawn-like layers, pebbles, sculptural greenery and shaded trees. This led us to a palette of materials that would let the greenery stand out.
Please tell us about some of the custom pieces for the space.
We designed banquette seating next to the large window, which we then framed with a landscape of plants for extra privacy while dining. We also created moss plates on the walls and installed a statement sculptural Chinese pine tree at the centre of the restaurant. Along the mosaic wall are ribbons of pebbles that function as a path that can be used to navigate through the restaurant. We also built the pavilion under a column and beam structure, which we then surrounded with potted greenery.
Do you have a favourite element or design detail in the architecture or interiors?
I like how we treated the traditional Asian elements very subtly. It’s our way of emphasising a Chinese sensibility rather than just a literal representation.
The bubble glass partition was specially created by local glass supplier Saint Glas. It took a lot of trial and error to achieve the gradient, but the glass now sits perfectly alongside the green features.
Images / Edmon Leong
