Cool Spaces: LA.Prime Kitchen

WORDS Cheri Morris IMAGES Peter Dixie / LOTAN

LA.Prime Kitchen is a new contemporary eatery and cocktail bar designed by Shanghai-based studio Quarta & Armando Architecture Design Research.

While it may be located in a shopping centre, the 280 m² LA.Prime Kitchen is anything but your typical mall eatery. The design concept came as a result of two ideas that are pivotal to founders Gianmaria Quarta and Michele Armando’s design aesthetic.

Not wanting to conform to one style, they started off by crafting a particular set of rules and playing with them by adding touches of “hybridisation and complexity”. The result is a finish that boasts both balance and juxtaposition, something that is illustrated in the combination of both colourful and monochromatic palettes.

The ceiling’s bent steel screens aim to capture light as it changes throughout the day. Typically indoor materials, such as striped concrete tiles, coarse-grained stucco and terrazzo flooring are instead used outside and greenery comes indoors to add a natural touch to the space.

The eatery also features a large circular mirror. “Projected onto its irregular surface, the light of the space underneath distorts into colourful shapes before being cast outside,” explains the team.

See more projects by Q&A Architecture Design Research here.