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Project:
Haiku Restaurant, London

 
Haiku is a new Asian Fusion restaurant created in the lower levels of the New Burlington Place development, just off Regent Street. It has three floors, each with its own show kitchen and each with a different style of cuisine. Our brief was to create an atmospheric destination restaurant where all of the focus was on the food offering.

All three show kitchens were linked by the use of a feature light box above their counters, textured by the use of Japanese paper as a diffusing material. A careful application of soft light was used to brush the timber and granite surfaces around the restaurant and provide a backdrop to the dining experience.

In order to allow the food to hold "centre stage" it was judged best not to use candles or other local light sources on the tables. Therefore the challenge for dpa was how to direct focussed light to the tables to create a sense of drama and highlight the food. A different approach was adopted on each level.

The low ceilings of the upper floor required some ingenious placement of track-mounted spotlighting so as to avoid any intrusion by the light fittings into the dining experience.

In the basement, where more height was available, small pendant lamps were hung over each table, each fitted with a narrow-beam reflector lamp to provide a small, focussed, area of light. The pendants were mounted on ceiling tracks, allowing the tables to be repositioned.

The double-height ground floor presented a particular challenge, as movable tables were required but yet the waiters would not be able to reach the light fittings to adjust them to match. An innovative solution was adopted using robotic spotlights. Each narrow-beam spotlight on the ceiling is adjustable for pan and tilt through the use of a simple remote control, which can be used by the restaurant's staff team without training.

Through the use of controlled lighting an exciting restaurant was achieved, which is sure to make a name for itself in London.