Description of project by ARQ TAILOR'S
The Wine District is located in Chiado, the heart of Lisbon.
Spacious and innovative, with a different Bar and Restaurant concept, its inspiration is based on the best combinations of Portuguese traditional cuisine, impressing and seducing the demanding palates of those who enjoy good eating and drinking.
The Wine District develops across a 600m2 area, which includes a terrace on an interior patio, a 22-metre long bar counter and an irresistible shop that sells all the products available on the Restaurant’s menus.
The style of this venue could be described as industrial. However, its comforting and glamorous atmosphere may puzzle one’s judgement, as this is a place for breathing in Art and Nature, with Wine always as the main focus.
Walking through the restaurant, one experiences a little of the existential history of wine, going from its earliest stages, including nature and vineyards, to the subtle and complex harmony of the wine-making process through to its delivery and tasting delights.
ARQ TAILOR’S was in charge of developing Wine District’s interior design project, drawing and designing all the 100% made in Portugal furniture, subtly sketched to convey a touch of comfort and elegance to its clients.
The 22-metre long bar counter, made from a French oak trunk, sculpted “in loco” by Portuguese artisans, is the project’s key element, embracing the entire interior terrace to provide constant visual contact with the outside world.
The main materials used in the design of this space are wood, exposed concrete, rusty iron, cork and leather.
The ambitious 4-metre high interior elevations show one of the building’s structural walls and its concrete formwork, depicting a story of Dionysus, the Greek God of wine.
We can also find a wooden figure of Bacchus, the God of wine in Roman mythology, with its iron ornaments outstretching to all the figures around it. Carved and painted in different colours, highlighting their movements, are Maenads or Bacchantes, followers and worshippers of Bacchus or Dionysus.
Covered in natural cork bark is a sumptuous-looking wall, as well as a rocky one, which previously belonged to a 1755 cistern, clearly revealing its old age.
Another artistic intervention is found in the wine shop, located next to the entrance to Wine District, this time in the form of a wine cellar painted on the wall, adding depth to this space where all sorts of unpredictable things occur.
To add dynamics and differentiate the available conviviality spaces, is a cork covered area built on a higher level, offering long and comfortable leather capitone sofas, framed in aged mirrors to expand the surrounding view and thus achieve a greater spatial perception.
