It’s like stepping into a wondrous cavern.

The Chiu, a restaurant designed by Nature Times Art Design, is located in the City of Hangzhou overlooking a river view. Hangzhou is located in China’s Jiangnan region, a region that has established its cultural context over thousands of years — its nature and culture, disorder and order, instinct and rationality.

The designers deconstructed the current definition of Jiangnan and adopted innovative spatial languages and ideas for the design of The Chiu.

The Chiu is a “one-diamond black pearl” restaurant serving Chaoshan cuisine with its new premises in Hangzhou on the 40th floor of Raffles City. Positioned as a private banquet restaurant, the design is minimalist yet intriguing from the moment you step into the space. The design reinterprets the deep meaning of cultural symbols by defying conventional thinking and breaking traditional expressions.

The entrance passageway to The Chiu is an ethereal corridor enveloped from top to bottom in a shimmering turquoise. Green jade, glass and flying "butterflies" create an immersive, surreal secret world. A circulation route loops around the restaurant while a garden-themed elevator hall incorporates flowing light and shadows, which surround delicate natural, handcrafted artworks.

Tea, as the connection point between Chaoshan and Jiangnan cultures, is bound up with life habits and even spiritual emotions. Water is the common root shared by the Lingdong region, to which Chaoshan and Jiangnan Region belongs to. The tea tasting area is set at one end of the elevator passage, where rough raw stones are brought

into the simple and clean space outlined by straight lines. The plain stone grains establish a dialogue with the distant "mountain scenery". The public dining area is situated at the other end of the passage enveloped by undulating irregular silver foil walls echoing the surging tides of the Qiantang River. The waterscape at the end fuses with the river scenery outside, with the sound of the waterfall bringing great visual and auditory tension. The walls slope and curve around the dining area, mimicking nature’s ability to shape and form.

To present the beauty of Jiangnan in the space, the design fully utilizes line, colour, shape and texture, combines landscape elements and objects representing distinctive cultural symbols such as snow, water, bridge and railing, and expresses them through contemporary art. Symbolic objects hidden in Jiangnan poetry and ink wash paintings are interwoven in the space, producing the interplay of virtuality and reality.

The restaurant’s selection of private dining rooms offers an intimate setting for business luncheons and spacious rooms for larger parties and special occasions.

Among the seven private rooms, some are gentle and reserved, while others are intense and glowing. The corridor connecting the various spaces guides guests through soft lighting and micro landscape installations. The smaller private rooms are ideal for business lunches and dinners, with a calming water and city view and soft, cushioned seating. sliding doors provide privacy for guests to discuss business matters.

The larger, themed rooms are awash in bright, welcoming colours that tie back with Chinese traditions and culture. Guests can choose from rooms such as “Afterglow” where the room is awash in a charming sunset yellow, the noblest hue in Chinese tradition favoured by luxury brands and also the colour resembling emperors of dynasties past. There is also the banquet room “Cloud”, where varying cyan shades depict layers of clouds as one would see in traditional Chinese watercolour paintings, connecting to the blue skies beyond the windows.

The Chiu presents a distinctively unique dining experience with an entrance that transitions you from every day into the designers’ interpretation and connection of the old and the new in Jiangnan culture.

PROJECT DETAILS

Project Name: The Chiu, Hangzhou

Location: L40, Raffles City, Xinye Road, Shangcheng District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province

Area: 750 square meters

Completion: December 2021

Design Firm: Nature Times Art Design Co., Ltd.

Creative Director: Wei Jinjing

Interior Finishes Design: Wei Yaocheng

Interior Decoration Design: Zhang Huichao, Lin Yushi

Construction Team: YCWORK/ Lao Zhaoqin, Lin Junru

Lighting Consultant: ENLIGHTEN/ Ding Jie

VI Design: Zhou Bin

Photos: Wu Jianquan