Concept as a bar: exclusive offers from hungarian, second generation wine producers in a dynamic bistro milieu.
Design concept: add experience to wine.
Location: Szent István Square, in the heart of Budapest’s city centre

History: an existing, fully equipped and furnished restaurant, closed for months, with dull colours and strong stone surfaces. Its unique characteristic, thanks to the big glass shop-front of the linear indoor space, is the marvellous view of the St. Stephen’s Basilica.
Expectations from the client: quick realization of an impressive and attractive interior design with functionality while also being cost-efficient.

suto interior architects proposal to the client’s expectations:

1. The cost efficient part of our main conception was “the interior design recycling”, redefining the existing surfaces, furniture and appliances: where the inherited beige coloured stone surfaces were painted black, the seats, being in good conditions, were refreshed with adding new back-rests with different height. The structure of the existing bar was used in the newly designed and reshaped one.

2. Our new vision of the place was created by generous usage of pine. This distinctive surface could also function as wall covering, tables, seats, bar counters or as part of wine racks. At the same time we also used other materials than the warm of pine, which differ in their characteristics: impregnated concrete , pvc floors with steel like shine intensify as well as weaken the pine dominated new vision. Big continuous surfaces of strong colours like black and the colour of pine both contribute to sense the depth of the space, while also provide a moderate background to display the wines and refer to the main function of the bistro.

3. We intensified the longitudinal dynamic of the space with visualizing shady, changing in heights motives onto large surfaces: this linear motive runs through the concrete bar, on the backs of seats and in the tube lights above the bar.

4. For us, the most important feature of the new atmosphere in the bistro is the redesigned lighting. Ee were looking for unique solutions. In the implementation we cooperated with some international manufacturers:
– tube lights, which spectacularly reflect to the dynamics of the space, are our own design and were produced by the belgian “tal” company.
– true jewels of the bistro are the five pieces of “flos 2097-30” chandeliers. the metal parts of them were custom made, according to our request in matte black finish.with this our aim was to make discreet contours by the black chandeliers hanging in a black space, this softens the hard angles of the tube lights running above the bar.

5. Instead of designing a terrace, we had a contemporary recommendation how to use the square in front of the bar: leaving out he classical table and chair furnishing and not defining the contour of the outdoor area. Only putting out some movable, temporary concrete standing tables for the nights so the nearby fountain and its surroundings could be involved in the life of the bistro.

Photographer: Zsolt Batar

http://www.arthitectural.com/suto-interior-architects-divino-wine-bar/