Concrete, metal and exposed fixtures were combined with Cantonese craft details and bright neon lights to give Chinese restaurant Bun House Disco in London an industrial party feel.
Located at the top of Brick Lane in London’s Shoreditch area, Bun House Disco is the sister restaurant of Bun House in Chinatown.
Restaurateur and designer Z He wanted the new space to have a different feel to the Chinatown site and worked with textural contrasts to create the right energy.
“Disco is a straight-up clash of the ‘East-meets-industrial’,” He told Dezeen. “We took Shoreditch’s industrial bones and smashed them together with the detail and ornament of Cantonese craft.”
“It’s the opposite of our Chinatown site, which has the buzzy warmth of a tea parlour,” added He, who founded the restaurants with her husband Alex Peffly.
“Here, it’s all about juxtaposition of textural energy: neon light on handmade tiles, concrete next to ornate patterns, and a rhythm in the space that matches the beat of the disco playlist.”
The restaurant, which serves street food including wontons, noodles and custard buns, also aims to evoke the feel of Hong Kong nights through the use of a colour palette with a party vibe.
“We’ve always worked with red and green – it’s in our DNA – but for Disco we cooled the tones, made them sharper, moodier,” He said.
“It’s a palette straight out of Hong Kong’s neon nights: colours that don’t just sit on the walls but glow and shift with the light,” she added.
“With the neon, the reds get deeper, the greens punch harder, and the whole place hums with a sexy glow.”
Inside Bun House Disco, simple metal and wooden chairs are combined with striped banquette seating, a canteen-style red floor and stripped-back walls.
These industrial details were juxtaposed with glazed green-and-white tiles at the entrance to the restaurant.
“The base is raw – concrete, exposed steel, tough finishes – but we inserted materials that don’t traditionally belong in such a setting,” He said.
“The most prominent example is the Shiwan-glazed ceramic lace window tiles at the entrance, handmade in collaboration with a master from my hometown in Guangdong.”
The designer wanted the space to have a mix of “hard and soft, old and new”, with decorative details including a disco ball and “perfectly imperfect” colourful paper lanterns.
“I found them years ago at the back of an Asian grocery store in America, shoved on a dusty shelf,” she said. “They cost next to nothing, but they were gold to me. I bought them all, knowing they’d find their moment.”
“In Disco, they hang like little bursts of dreamlike nostalgia, cutting through the concrete and steel and bringing the human touch back into the space.”
She hopes that the overall design will create an experience that combines an industrial interior with a traditional craftsmanship feel.
“We wanted guests to feel that moment of dissonance and delight: stepping through a neon-lit, industrial space and finding details that whisper of traditional Cantonese craftsmanship, all set to a disco beat,” He concluded.
In Paris, design studio Atelieramo created an interior for Bao Express that draws on Hong Kong diners from the 1970s, while Hong Kong nightlife informed the interior of the Meo cocktail bar and restaurant in Vancouver.
The photography is by Tony Mak.
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