New Wave by Da Vittorio restaurant in the UCCA Edge museum in Shanghai is a coming together of disparate elements; a family-run Italian restaurant from the foothills of Bergamo in Shanghai and a fine dining experience within the realm of an art gallery.

The New Wave Art Movement, which lends itself to the restaurant’s identity represented confrontation between Chinese and Western Culture, resulted in bold experimentation that brought Chinese art into the modern art world. The concept for the restaurant comes from the collision of these opposing elements and the process of change.

Linehouse seeks to curate transitional moments through a sequence of abstracted and experiential spaces. Referencing the colonnade, in classical architecture defined as a long sequence of columns, we bring arches as a prototype element into the space, as one moves through the feature bar to interior dining and outdoor terrace, This abstracted colonnade brings guests from the public museum space into the more private dining room, through a compressed long corridor to a released open area, the sequence of arched mirrors create the illusion of an infinite journey dominated by spatial progression.

The design of the ceiling installation throughout the restaurant was also born out of the abstract negative shapes formed by the interplay of rhythmically sized round arches. Ceiling fins are made of a unique Japanese triaxle fabric in woven texture, curvy cut, and vaulted volume giving softness to the space.

Throughout the restaurant, we seek contradiction in materiality to create qualities of soft and hard, rough to smooth, order to unordered, and solid to transparent. Materials are manipulated as a catalyst for creating disorder, dissipation, fragmentation, and surprise.