Canadian studio Ste Marie has designed Meo cocktail bar and restaurant influenced by Seventies and ’80s Hong Kong in Vancouver‘s Chinatown, utilizing pink hues, floral patterns and purple accents.
Meo is tucked into the decrease storey of a light constructing within the coronary heart of the neighbourhood, the most important of its variety in Canada, and is a sister location to Bao Bei a couple of blocks away and Kissa Tanto subsequent door.
Ste Marie was closely influenced by the “hedonistic power” of the Seventies and ’80s when designing the interiors, and appeared to the imagery of Canadian photographer Greg Girard – who documented Kowloon Walled Metropolis through the period — for references.
“The dimly lit room is aesthetically impressed by Greg Girard’s sequence on Hong Kong nightlife within the ’70s and ’80s, and by the clandestine ‘love motels’ of a bygone period,” mentioned the studio.
To evoke these areas, plush pink material and luxurious carpeting with classic floral patterns had been added all through the eating and bar areas.
Daring purple accents are launched by way of Seventies Guzzini pendant lights, which pop towards the dim wooden panelling throughout parts of the partitions.
A raised space with angled steps follows the dropped ceiling and is wrapped by a banquette that serves rows of tiny tables.
On the again, a painterly scene of mountains, flora and buildings is mirrored in a sequence of mirrors on the perpendicular wall.
Different built-in seating areas are tucked into corners and niches, whereas visitors may also sit at leather-covered stools alongside the wood-panelled bar.
Balmy supple lighting from quite a lot of pendants, sconces, cove lights and bar-top lamps creates a sultry temper, and permits the illuminated blue entrance of a jukebox to face out.
“A glowing old-school jukebox, harking back to Girard’s photographs, provides a way of nostalgia and novelty to the richly textured ambiance,” the studio mentioned.
A number of curios and decor objects – lots of them feline-themed – had been sourced by the proprietor from thrift shops in Taiwan.
In the meantime, artworks embody a portrait of a Persian cat discovered at a storage sale and a vinyl-printed mural of {a photograph} taken inside a North Korean lodge.
“These components, mixed with the plush pink monochromatic interiors impressed by motel bedspreads, create an immersive surroundings that transports visitors again in time,” mentioned Ste Marie. “Meo invitations with heat and surprise: a playful escape the place the night time is all the time juvenile and stuffed with potentialities.”
The studio, identified for its narrative strategy to up to date interiors, was based by Craig Stanghetta and has places of work in each Vancouver and Toronto.
Different hospitality tasks by the agency embody an artisanal flour store and bakery with “malty hues”, a tapas joint wrapped in terracotta tiles and a cosy Italian cafe imagined as a den for a pet fox.
Girard’s pictures of Kowloon, compiled in a ebook titled The Metropolis of Darkness, additionally influenced the manufacturing design of 2019 sci-fi film Alita: Battle Angel.
Love motels like these in Kowloon should not unique to Hong Kong – architectural photographers have documented these areas for intercourse in Santo Domingo and throughout Brazil through the years too.
