For over a decade, Otto Wagner's 19th century elevated rail line around the Gürtel in Vienna has been progressively redeveloped by occupying the lower vaulted spaces. The 'Gürtelbögens' generous brick interiors have come to define a central part of Vienna's night life with trendy clubs, rock bars, and restaurants. We were approached by a young restauranteur to design two vaults at the far end of the line where a recently completed business center was starting to fill with tenants. Unlike the neighboring vaults which open to a large courtyard, the given vaults are compressed in an alley. Furthermore, one of the vaults is obstructed by a large stair tower for the business complex above, blocking light and views to the outside With these dark and narrow conditions in mind, invisible to the intersection of several major roads and rail lines around the site, we wanted to make the cavernous spaces glow from within. The sparse interior, defined by the interaction of concrete, a white steel mesh, and neon tubes that are constantly fluctuating in brightness with programmed dimmers gives the impression of a pulsing, breathing machine. The area around the site is uncommon in Vienna in that it appears to be part of a more congested urban context than it really is. This has largely to do with overlapping layers of infrastructure and transport. Our design is as much a reaction to the dark interior conditions of the space as it is a reaction to the seemingly hyper-urban environment around it.
In contrast to the industrial, urban, and somewhat cold architectural approach, the graphics are loud, saturated, and all the while intensely Chinese. For us, it was important to represent Chinese identity as we see it now. The graphic concept for the restaurant originated from playing with typical Ming chinaware motifs and mixing them with illustrations of contemporary scenes in Shanghai.
As an exercise in inconspicuousness, our approach for furnishing the Neon restaurant was to reduce the presence of the objects to a bare minimum without actually changing their basic form or the fundamental attributes that make them universally recognizable. Partially inspired by the way comics illustrate furniture when it is not central to the pictorial narrative, as base symbols of what they represent (a chair is hardly ever more than what it is) the tables, chairs, bar stools, and benches are thinned down to their structural frames. The alignment of the height of the chairs with the table surface also diminishes their silhouette. Due to the controlled lighting conditions in the restaurant, the furniture blends into the shadows that it casts, itself becoming another shadow.
