Silver Interior Space and Exhibition Design · 2023
Monmono Blue Restaurant and Gallery
by Alvan Suen
- A' Design Award 2023 Silver Winner in Interior Space and Exhibition Design
- Awarded April 15, 2023
- CLIENT: The Montage Group Limited
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 13,667
- Verification code 9BB4548939 · Verify this award
About Monmono Blue Restaurant and Gallery
Monmono Blue is a restaurant and gallery interior in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. The whole space is finished in a single blue tone, creating a monochrome setting for art. Four zones recall a casino, a hotel, a retail store and a piazza, and a vintage car is placed with part of the body out of view. Contrast is built with gloss and matt textures and with lighting at 6000K, because warmer light would make the blue look green. Most elements were prefabricated and installed on site. The interior covers 1464 square feet and seats 50 guests.
Alvan Suen's Monmono Blue Restaurant and Gallery represents a compelling contemporary exploration of total environmental design, wherein the immersive application of a singular chromatic identity transforms functional hospitality space into experiential art installation. The work demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how color saturation and tonal consistency can dissolve the boundaries between architecture, furnishing, and decorative art, creating unified perceptual experience that envelops visitors within a carefully orchestrated visual atmosphere. The designer appears to draw upon historical precedents of the Gesamtkunstwerk tradition while inflecting these influences through contemporary hospitality design sensibilities, achieving balance between theatrical drama and functional comfort. Technical accomplishment manifests in the nuanced handling of tonal variation within the constrained palette, where subtle shifts from deep shadow tones to lighter accents on velvet surfaces create spatial hierarchy and visual interest without disrupting chromatic unity. The salon-style arrangement of artworks and decorative objects demonstrates curatorial sophistication, transforming wall surfaces into densely layered visual fields that reward extended contemplation. Lighting design achieves particular distinction through the strategic placement of warm-temperature sources that create golden pools against the cool blue environment, establishing dynamic color temperature dialogue that energizes the space while maintaining its contemplative character. The inclusion of sculptural elements, notably the ceramic feline figures positioned in the upper gallery, introduces narrative and symbolic dimensions that invite interpretation while contributing to the overall atmosphere of refined eclecticism. The bilateral symmetry of the composition evokes classical principles of harmony and proportion, grounding the maximalist decorative approach within ordered spatial logic. Visitors might consider how the deliberate restriction of chromatic range paradoxically amplifies awareness of subtle variations, textures, and the interplay of light and surface across this unified environmental composition.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Monmono is a restaurant, a gallery, and an art piece. With the brand core of montage, monochrome and monogram, the project aims to position itself as an urban art insertion expressing its obsession with monochrome. The entire shop is fully finished in Blue, offering people a novel and surreal feeling of being in the world of art. The implication of blue in a realistic vintage design with a surreal monochrome environment helps with showing more design details in a mysterious, calm and elegant ambiance so as to emphasize the playfulness of monochrome design. Also, scenes like a casino in the US, a hotel in the UK, retail in France and a piazza in Rome are created and turned the entire shop into a movie scene. One of the key features will be the vintage car, with a small turn angle and 1/3 of it is unseen, offering an interesting sense of stop motion. By combining various realistic worldwide vintage scenes and architecture into the abstract world of blue, taking the advantage of a monochrome style to find harmony between different eras and styles, creating a unique art piece in the city.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Total Area: 1464 sq.ft. Capacity: 50
- Tags
- Monochrome, Regal Blue, Vintage, Piazza, America, Casino, French, Retail, British, Hotel, Rome, Hall, Classic Car, Gallery, Surrealism
- Production Technology
- The light temperature of 6000K is rarely used in restaurants, but it is used in this case since the lighting of 4000K or below will green out the blue space.
Most of the construction elements are pre-fabricated in the factory and installed on-site, to ensure a precise and fine finishing and an efficient workflow.
Some of the materials such as terrazzo for the tables are custom-made due to the color tone.
In order to make sure the final result is ideal and everything works and fits, the project was mainly created on the computer; rendering is heavily used for testing different materials and calculating lux as well as color temperature for all lighting throughout the entire design process. For communicating on-site with the contractor, besides the construction drawing set, a virtual reality walk-through was also created for the workers to quickly understand the project. - Design Challenge
- For styles like industrial, contrast can be made easily by the mixture of concrete, steel, wood and an open ceiling. When it comes to monochrome style, creating contrast simply by use of color is not an option, the use of different textures of materials such as gloss and matt, the use of lighting, the use of dark and bright, etc, have become extra important in this project. Also, the choices of material will also be limited, for example, it is a huge challenge in terms of sourcing of materials for glass, paint, leather, terrazzo and curtain with similar colors, it deeply relies on the products and stock of the material suppliers. In terms of the challenge of lighting design, the lighting temperature must not be too warm as the blue space will be green out with lighting of 4000K or below. In consideration of maintenance and beauty, the canopy in the casino scene is filled with crystal balls with two LED strips outlined, to mimic the old casino without installing tons of lightbulbs.
- Project Duration
- The project is located in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. The design was started in January 2022 and the construction was finished in Aoril 2022.
- Operation Flow
- The layout has been divided into 4 sections, private room (Hotel), semi-private room (Retail), high stool table (Casino) and main dining area (Piazza), the variety of seating provided diversity to the space, meanwhile providing clear zoning for operation. The main dining area was centered in the middle of two doors located on each side of the façade; two main hallways were separated by a series of dining tables in the middle, which can be flexibly arranged to cater to different groups of people. Each side of the main dining area and independent rooms has its own service sideboard, designed to be hidden in the scenes with good accessibility for operation flow. The kitchen door is set back from the dining area structure wall to keep the consistent outlook of the design, acoustic control and other control panels were stored in the cabinet in the kitchen lobby. The cashier was decorated as one of the feature scenes next to the exit door, and most of the functional equipment and furniture were designed to align with the concept, beautiful and highly functional.
- Research
- The Monmono project is also a huge art project that aims to insert each single-color restaurant into different parts of the city, using monochrome as a very understandable and compelling theme, using restaurants as a high-traffic daily business, to provide a very unique platform for the local artists to exchange ideas and to have their own exhibition. The strong brand identity has successfully attracted a lot of people to visit and get to know more about monochrome as an art form as well as the artists' works. The artwork to be exhibited in Monmono has to be in monochrome style while the artist's own style is maintained. As a result of such creative projects, most of the artists got inspired and improved by creating in monochrome due to the limitation of color options and contrast.
- Inspiration
- The idea of monochrome is inspired by architectural study models, the beauty of a simple scale pure white object, and the beginning of all projects. What if the city is built with only one color? The buildings, the windows, doors, canopies, vehicles, streetlamps, furniture, the ground and the sky, the entire world is in one color, how interesting would it be? However, it would be an impossible project. Looking at the beautiful city of Hong Kong, which is busy, complex and colorful, what if there is a mass of one single color is inserted into the urban context? With a simple, clean, and clam object of a single color, creating an entertaining and provocative contrast with the Hong Kong city context.
- Image Credits
- Photographer: Yui Zhu
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Nameless Hong Kong Limited, 2022
Colors of Monmono Blue Restaurant and Gallery
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