Excerpt: Inari, a restaurant interior project by Arch.lab, is designed to create a delicate and contemporary ambience while maintaining an Indian identity. The project uses pink hues as its soul, wrapping surfaces in a monolithic feeling while allowing subtle geometry and texture to add depth. White marble baluster installations reinterpret traditional motifs in a contemporary framework, defining zones with visual permeability.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] Inari, a modish Indian cuisine restaurant, located in Panchkula, completed in 2022, has been designed to create a delicate and contemporary yet rooted Indian identity. This anchoring and experimental spirit is achieved through pink hues that become the soul of the project.
The walls and ceiling are finished in surkhi cement plaster, casting a muted pink tone across the space. The tiled flooring continues in similar hues, wrapping the surfaces in a monolithic feeling. This continuous skin holds elements of visual play in simple yet deliberate ways: the diagonal tiling of the floor shifts the geometry subtly, and the walls bear a rippling texture, achieved by plastering over corrugated sheets.
A key conceptual element is the installation of white marble elements- a design holding memory of traditional balusters and handmade by artisans. Set within slender metal frames, these baluster installations slice the trapezoidal footprint diagonally. They double as screens and create distinct zones partly as visual permeability, and partly as space definition. These screens echo traditional motifs set in a contemporary framework.
Lighting is handled delicately, with tiny pinhole fixtures spotlighting tables, while freestanding lamps punctuate the soft palette. Select tabletops in white marble extend the material language of the baluster installation.
Throughout, design ingenuity lies in the re-interpreting of everyday materials and objects in new roles.
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