Cheering Restaurant

The restaurant was made from a long-abandoned building in the city centre whose steel frame and some cladding, glass, steel bars and metal roofing could be reused. The Vietnamese design team drew on pavement life, where much of the city’s eating happens day and night under old trees.

The existing steel was welded into a new system that carries services inside and is clad with low-grade timber strips, forming timber members 40 by 40 cm. Stacked at right angles on a three-dimensional grid and spreading upward like tree roots, they divide spaces and make a children’s play area.

The roots continue into a stable frame that cuts heat and casts shadows under a polycarbonate roof, with an air layer cooled by water spray fed from a rainwater tank. Structure and cladding, ceiling and wall, inside and outside run together.