Restaurant Tagawa

Tagawa restaurant in Brussels is one of the oldest Japanese restaurants in Europe. We were asked to give a new identity to the restaurant that has existed for 25 years. It is a fairly large restaurant that consists of various parts of a large dining room where European businessmen and bureaucrats lunch and dinner, individual Japanese rooms where Japanese people organize business dinners in a private environment, a sushi bar and a tempura bar serving Japanese food lovers exclusive food.

Above components take approximately 500 m2 in use and for the renovation was no clear spatial structure for the quite different audiences who are simultaneously present in the restaurant. Our goal was to create a spatial structure that simultaneously suggests the particular identity of the restaurant. This must divide the various places like the great hall, the Japanese rooms, the sushi bar and the Tempura Bar in a proper way so each place gets the right atmosphere and dimension while creating a harmonious whole. And it was also important that the design represents a real Japanese restaurant.

The traditional Japanese garden was an inspiration for us. Landscape elements such as stones, bamboo and trees which by clustering and rehearsing make various places of intimacies and spheres were created in the Japanese garden. It is a viewing garden from fixed locations and it simultaneously allows visitors to walk around the gardens to enjoy various atmospheres. We proposed a combination of vertical discs of cedar wood, a cloud-like ceiling and a hilly base of bamboo of dark wood as a base element. The restaurant is classified under the flow of guests and the size and intimacy of the areas. Guests are guided by the with the elements choreographed path to the by these elements created various places.