The Xinrongji Reataurant, Shanghai BFC Bund | Jianyu Jiang

The Bund Xinrongji restaurant designed by Daxiang Design Studio is located in the Shanghai BFC Financial Center adjacent to the Fosun Foundation and facing the Huangpu River on the north side. It allows the gourmets and tourists to enjoy the bustling scenery of the Bund in the bustling city while dining.

The designer believes that the space design is like the Black and White Go Game, where the function setting is like every moving in the game that one step with one fascinating scenery, The design of the restaurant incorporates Xinrongji’s interpretation of the elements from the The Romance of The Three Kingdoms and takes ancient and modern wine culture as the theme, and folk custom murals originated from the book as the keynote.

Upon entering the restaurant, you can see the statue of Guan Gong at the Buddha's niche by the window who always represents the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation, where distinguishes the mission of Xinrongji.

Behind him is a bustling view of the Bund, and the red statue becomes a lead-in of the space theme. Located in the central area with excellent scenery by the Huangpu River, the main dining area owns different dining table layouts which can meet various needs of customers. All sorts of wine bottles in the bar area exude an attractive luster under the soft lighting, which makes people feel pleasant.

In order to abandon useless decorations and concentrate on bringing scenery into the hall, the dining stalls and bar areas at the source of the scenery have become the focal point of the space.

A wine room is divided on the left side of the area as a wine storage area, where customers can taste wine.The antiqued grate brass screen presents a semi-transparent effect. The small space is used as the condensing of the large one, and forms a visual extension, which creates a unique and private atmosphere.

The whiskey bar is in an open area. Under the dark background, there is a long and narrow wine display table with a half-dark countertop. The light passes through the entire wine wall and finally converges on the glass countertop.

The obliquely cut wall in the transition zone guides the diners through the sharply constricted passage to the lobby, where the view is first closed and then widened, and makes people feel that things will be always more brighter after experiencing the dark ones, which amplifies the openness of the lobby space.

The dining seats and boxes are dominated by the sense of experience, and are  clearly separated by the colors, so that the guests' travel lines, food delivery lines, and the service lines are completely separated.

The mural in the hall is the eye of inspiration of the entire place. The artist painted the two major climaxes of the traditional Three Kingdoms story - the Three Heroes Combating with Lv Bu and Five Tiger-like Generals, which not only retains the simplicity of folk paintings, but also reflects the brotherhood and statesman style to extend the space emotions.

The designer extracts the five elements for coloring, and applies these emotional color languages to the space. Each dining table in the room is decorated with glass Kylin ornaments, the symbol of Xinrongji, which adds a bit of fun to the restaurant.

Traditional artistic decorations with full of scene feeling which creates a space atmosphere of suiting to the refined and popular tastes, strengthens the memory of space, and triggers diners' reverie.

The banquet hall has multiple functions. In addition to taking on the space role of daily food appraisal, it can also accommodate multi-themed traditional banquets for many persons, where the city of Shanghai and the branded restaurant Xinrongji achieve each other and continue the dialogue between tradition and contemporary space.

Project Name: the Xinrongji, Shanghai BFC Bund Store

Design Company: DA XIANG Design

Design Team Member: Jianyu Jiang, Xiaohua Zheng, Yue Qin, Ting Lou, Yongliang Liu

Project Floor Area: 850㎡

Photographer: Fang Jia