The client desired a “traditional” restaurant that would fit the typology of its former use as an historic loading house on the harbour front. Avoiding a typical “clean and minimalist” design, we were more interested in specific qualities of ambiance and mood that would allow spatial, period and conceptual differentiation. As a safeguard for the project’s complexity, contingency and internal dynamics, we put together a design team of contributors known for a dynamic approach to a local tradition. The team was thereby divided into groups, each assigned to an established zone within the restaurant. The challenge: sensitizing the team to curator or self-organising aspects and managing the overpowering and flattening tendencies of the inter-group dynamics.

Stim features:
- Artist Randy Naylor’s ‘Re-Science Bar’ composed of crushed beverage cans and video art of seismic maps from the offshore oil industry
- Kitchen wall tiling using dishware from the local porcelain maker Figgjo
- An embroidered table and lamp by industrial designer Trond Halvorsen
- A prototypical adaption of a traditional “Jæren wicker chair” with its load bearing elements in laser-cut aluminium
- A rose-painted ceiling by Hildegard Håheim

Team: Reinhard Kropf, Siv Helene Stangeland, Cecilie Andersson