Under the Sea

Under the Sea is a small sushi bar in the historical center of Saint - Petersburg.

Our clients came to us with idea to make something unusual in visual and construction terms. They had only name of restaurant - Under the Sea and 110 sq.m. space in a historical bulding. It was our starting point.

One of the advantages of the space was its ceiling height, so we decided to use it as visual magnet of the whole space and place some key structure there. This is how the massive wooden structure under the ceiling appeared. This construction consists of more than 40 wooden pieces and refers us to a huge polygonal wave, so visitors sit under metaphorical water. And this is a reference to the restaurant's name - Under the Sea.

As a visual reference we took combination of Japanese and Scandinavian minimalism.

We wanted to make really clean and simple design, that would help to make main focus on food, not on the decor - that’s why the entire walls are just painted white, all the functional elements are made of stainless steel, custom-made tables with white tabletops emphasizes dishes of this place.

With the ceiling structure we faced the main problem: since the space is a part of a historical building - its constructions were very weak and couldn't carry anything heavy on the ceiling. Huge metallic cage was constructed all over the space and this solution let us move load from ceiling to side elements of the cage. Later on the cage was covered by the plaster walls.