La Xina Restaurant

Sandra Tarruella Interioristas designed the ‘La Xina Restaurant’ in Barcelona, Spain.

Description from the architects:

We approach the project of La Xina, as we did at the time with the Japanese. Documenting with books, films and travel to extract the essence of what is attractive to us and thought of Chinese culture and thus be able to accompany and tuck the project Group Tragaluz to a different Chinese in Barcelona.

In this way, textures, colours, smells, steam cookers, the ornament of the lattices, brilliant lacquers and their reflections, the patina of aged wood, wall lamps as lanterns, the symbolism of the lamp dragon, evoke a Chinese atmosphere without lapsing into clichés, making the whole richer, but at the same time differentiating very modern in its concept.

The kitchen should have a place in this restaurant and enjoy the view of preparing dishes from a customer is a premise of Thomas Tarruella. Wood as a noble material had to be present and therefore we have used Chinese latticework for coating walls and as a separator spaces and oak aged for floor and wall furniture.

The light is always on time and looking for warm and illuminate zones by creating welcoming, warm and intimate wanting to highlight the work of the foremost chefs.

The ground floor is divided into three spaces to be cooking the main protagonist being the first space you see the client to access the restaurant and enjoy the moment of preparing the dishes.

The central dining room is limited on three sides with a collage of Chinese latticework, which allow us to see through them what is happening on both sides. This dining table is composed by six square oak aging tables each illuminated by a lamp with a silk screen for each table by a single space to enjoy the taste of the china food in good company.

Running in parallel to the facade, the presence of a long red table illuminated by a large parchment dragon allows us to create a visual connection between the ground floor and first floor, inviting the client to go up and discover that looks at the top and from the Ramblas locate the access.

This is surprising because the top floor bar and large central kitchen that give a lot of personality highlighting the work of chefs over any element. The treatment of this space has been made using two basic materials, iron and wood, iron as a coating that hides a kitchen, bathrooms and slides to double up the floor space to house removals from the kitchen. Wood for the flooring, siding of the bar and furniture, and the lattices to China wall. The lighting in this area focuses on the chefs and bar creating points of light above each customer.

The third and final area of this site is a little loft with high windows which give the Ramblas. This space has been treated somewhat differently from the others by its peculiarity.

Again materials like wood for coating furniture, Chinese latticework cladding for walls and due to the low height that we have introduced a material for the roof of plastic and elastic tension that creates a mirror effect, and we multiply the height visually space giving a special magic to this place which is accentuated even more with the lighting of lamps, that some one might say that is a modern adaptation of what would be the Chinese lanterns in various sizes and distributed throughout the surface of the roof creating some reflections that enhance and enrich the space.