Casaplata is an unusually fresh-looking, newly reimagined restaurant and cocktail bar in the old quarter of Seville, Spain.
While many renovations in the area have referenced the past and sought to express a historical revival, Madrid-based Lucas y Hernández-Gil avoided nostalgia and aimed for a fresh future-focused look.
The vision of the design team, enthusiastically approved by the young restaurateurs, includes brutalist grey concrete, exposed pipes and metal, but all accented with a soft, almost feminine pastel colour palette and rounded forms.
The result is a chic, minimalist and gently soothing space that bears the studio’s signature look of a white/monotone grey envelope, soft hues and rounded shapes as accents.
The designers say that they referenced the ‘poetic vision of everyday objects’ as expressed by the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi whose still lifes often featured granular, uneven grey backgrounds with everyday items, such as bottles, vases, pitchers and jars in muted, pastel tones.
Lucas y Hernández- Gil completed not just the architecture and design of the 100 square-metre (1,076 sq.ft) space that housed a café before but also designed the furniture and graphic design.
The complete transformation of the restaurant that now seats 70 patrons includes a false ceiling of silvery metal slats that absorbs noise and reflects light.
Casaplata is located in a residential area with shops that is close to La Encarnacion Square and its Metropol Parasol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropol_Parasol, a set of six massive wooden ‘parasols’ designed by the German architect Jürgen Mayer, completed in April 2011 and considered the world’s largest wooden structure. The locals call the controversial structure Las Setas de la Encarnación (Incarnation’s mushrooms). Tuija Seipell
