Enjoy Chinese Tea Culture with the Most Soothing Dining Design

Modern Dining Tables brings you today the stunning dining design of a tea house and restaurant in Shanghai, the Icha Chateau. With a soothing ambience and a marvellous dining area, this establishment might be a exactly what you need to get yourself together.

China’s tea culture has a long-standing history that dates back to the Tang dynasty, more than eleven centuries ago. Since then traditional teahouses have become a common fixture in Chinese cities and villages as a place for drinking tea, relaxation and entertainment.

Icha Chateau’s new flagship restaurant and tea bar in Shanghai housed in a mid-19th century colonial heritage building in a newly developed outdoor shopping district, local architecture and interior design practice Spacemen have found inspiration in the rolling hills of tea plantations to create a sculptural space of subtle luxury and modern sophistication.

In the main dining area, guests are seated below a sublime, gleaming canopy made out of 35,000 meters of gold chains that form a series of undulating planes; the disembodied landscape is an allusion to the scenic topography of endless rolling hills where tea is cultivated. The dining chairs with golden accents bring luxury and glamour to the dining design, without being too much.

Varying in hue from gold to bronze to copper, the organic shapes create an ethereal grotto enhanced by the strategically placed mirror behind the banquet seating, which also gives a sense of spaciousness to the otherwise narrow space, and the wavy line of illuminated brass orbs by UK designer Lee Broom.

The semi-transparency of the chain-curtains not only offer guests a sense of privacy but also conceals light fittings, sprinklers, ducts and other equipment as well as camouflages a structural pillar that stands inconveniently in the middle of the space, while their quivering tactility invite guests to touch them.

Meanwhile, the golden fantasia conjured by the suspended chain-curtains is complemented by the brass details of the chairs, tables and other furnishings, while the grey terrazzo flooring, the muted hues of the upholstery and the matte black cabinetry provide a much needed visual respite without subtracting from the venue’s overall muted luxuriance.

The result is a dream-like space of effortless sophistication that evocatively conjures in the middle of Shanghai the rural beauty of Chinese countryside.

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