Golden Egg Bar

Beijing

Located on Beijng’s Third Ring East, the Golden Egg Bar is BAM’s newest restaurant, completed in 2013. A Chinese entrepreneur who grew up in London, the owner imagined a restaurant serving fusion Sichuan cuisine late into the night. The design concept is to blend Chinese elements with 50’s American Diner. Ming chairs, vibrant colors, and sliding screen doors are set against a checkerboard floor. Curvilinear walls in the restaurant plan avoid interior corners and satisfy Chinese superstition. Diner style 4-top booths line the walls of the restaurant while a ‘Chinese’ polychrome graphic floats above. The centerpiece of the restaurant is a large and highly polished Golden Egg. The Egg functions as a full bar and service counter. The seating side of the bar at the entry of the restaurant is full barstool height, whereas steps leading up the back of the egg allow for a more casual chair height dining at the bar. A stylized fin drawn in the spirit of the 50’s automobile and diner culture adorns the back of the egg. The fin also acts as a luminous wine display shelf set against the backdrop of zooming dimmable LED battens. This anachronistic pairing of contemporary Sichuan food and 50’s Diner culture creates a vibrant and convivial atmosphere. As with the fusion of cuisine, the design of the space works to surprise your visual senses with provocative recombination.

BAM's second restaurant project uses a variation of the waffle structure used in the L'Idiot objects. In the L'Idiot project we use more complex forms. Here the waffle structure creates more simply an object which holds a mor wholly functional space, a bar and service counter. There are fixtures and equipment and storage detailed into neat compartments. It has the feeling of being inside of a ship.

As in the L'Idiot forms, the Golden Egg is covered in multiple layers of wooden slats. The effect of the bare wooden form, as in the L'Idiot objects, is extremely captivating. BAM is looking for the right opportunity to explore this 'exposed wood slat ' technique further. The forms are covered, smoothed, and polished, ready for metallic gold paint and clear coat.

The restaurant includes two private dining rooms which can be joined in the event of a large party. Both rooms feature a lamp structure assembled from stacked cut wood and painted in a gradation. The Egg idea inspired a 'feminine' topography for the light structures.