Mediterraneo Restaurant

The project is the extension of the terrace and rearrangement of the garden and the interior of an existing restaurant in Neptun (a Romanian seaside resort). The design is based on the minimal idea of restructuring the articulation between the street and the existing terrace in a flexible way, simply by means of a series of eight modules oriented W-E (restaurant-street), distributed on the whole length of the garden on a total of 340 m² -"floating" platforms (concrete or wooden), with different positions depending on the existing vegetation, in an attempt to save all of the trees and flowers that were found there.

The modules, with a fixed width of 3.60 m and a length between 5 and 9 m, are made of a platform lifted from the ground, a metallic structure and a wooden frame with white linen stripes, as protection against sun, wind and rain. A particular image was also sought through onsite manufacturing of all the component parts of the design. Placing a water surface below four of the platforms (the ones that have the smallest distance inbetween them), creating a 9 m long table on one of the modules, as well as placing several painted canvases inside and outside the restaurant, were all attempts to differentiate spaces and keep them separated while still visually connected.

Mediterraneo, in the new form, was meant to be more than a restaurant. One of the main ideas of the project was to offer a flexible environment, a different image for different moments of the day. The atmosphere can be changed by very simple architectural means (already in place), music, light etc, in order to adapt the parts to various needs and to allow the simultaneous functioning of this variety. Supporting that idea, a main element which defines the image of the restaurant is the bottom part, the 'basis' of the terrace and the exterior bar (which connects the terrace to the garden), which glows with a diffuse yellow light from behind a glass "skin" and which changes the appearance of the restaurant once the evening comes.