RESTAURANT
"MATOLA"
Project: Restoration of Matola Restaurant
Design & Management : ESCULPIR EL AIRE
Location: Matola. Spain
Collaborators: Miguel Macia
Photographs: José Ángel Ruiz Cáceres
A NEEDED REFORM
The old restaurant, before carrying out the much-needed REFORM, responded to a typology similar to that of the 'highway bars', where –at the entrance– there is an open space with an endless bar and, next, another space with chairs and tables where it is impossible to dialogue without listening to the murmur of all those present (with an indomitable acoustic). Its construction was formed by the sum of several different buildings joined internally by open steps.
A NEW SPACE
The new restaurant offers new responses to the needs of its customers:
- a new location of the main entrance;
- a new main hall that welcomes diners and shows, through a glass, the activity inside the kitchen;
- a double interior circulation axis that facilitates the presence of the service without interfering with the public:
- a new distribution space for the 4 new dining rooms;
- a new acoustic ceiling and a new lighting system that articulates and improves the conditions of the activity.
AN AMPLIFICATION OF SPACE
Perceiving a space standing up is not the same as doing it sitting down. Taking this relevant difference into account, the whole of the space is dimensionally amplified through the use of a simple resource: this is produced by having arranged, on the partitions and at the height of vision, a sequence of horizontal windows –superimposed in the distance– that we perceive when we have sat at the table.