Esrawe Studio leads by Héctor Esrawe was commissioned to design the fifth Tori Tori restaurant from the renowned line of Japanese restaurants in the Santa Fe district, in Mexico City.

The project is inspired by the lightness and essentiality of Japanese craftsmanship. A cylindrical oak structure target attention in its dark interiors of this Japanese food restaurant created by Hector Ewrawe's design studio, who take as a reference the Samurai armours and Kanji characters on dark walls.
Located in the commercial district Santa Fe, on the ground floor of a corporate office tower, the project designed by Esrawe Studio encompasses 720-square-metre space on several dining areas and a Japanese grab-and-go shop.

Face to dark walls, tall glass walls enclose the restaurant. A wooden structure modelled on Esrawe Studio's Trama shelf design provides a geometric box-like storage for displaying the Japanese foods and snacks, and doubles as a divider.

The main element is a  tall and cylindrical structure that scales a triple-height room, at bottom restaurant.

The spatial compression and decompression given by the different heights of the ceiling and the positioning of the totems identify different areas inside the restaurant: a take-away area, a teppanyaki table, a central area of small tables and a glazed perimeter band with plants for larger tables.
 

Project description by Esrawe Studio

Tori Tori Santa Fe se convierte en el quinto proyecto de la reconocida cadena de restaurantes japoneses en la Ciudad de México, éste se encuentra en la planta baja de un edificio corporativo en el barrio de Santa Fe.

Inspirado en la sutileza y sobriedad de la destreza artesanal japonesa, de atmósfera serena y monocromática, el proyecto busca enfatizar la escala del espacio con dos elementos suspendidos fabricados en madera de encino. De carácter y expresión monumental evocan en su textura la construcción de las armaduras Samurai, en especial la coraza llamada dō. Uno de estos elementos enmarca un espacio de alimentos para llevar, denominado grab & go, y el de mayor escala se erige como una chimenea radial sobre la mesa principal de teppanyaki. Ambos se transforman en objetos lumínicos que definen y delimitan por su escala los dos polos del restaurante.  

El muro principal que aloja la barra de sushi es habitado por bajorrelieves basados en la abstracción y estilización de la escritura Kanji hacia gráficas con geometrías puras. El restaurante se compone además del área central, por una terraza con mesas para teppanyaki y un área privada para comensales.

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Creative Direction
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Héctor Esrawe. Design Concept.- Esrawe Studio. Interior Design and Furnishing.-  Esrawe Studio. Project Leader.- Heisei Carmona.
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Project team
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Javier García-Rivera, Lilian Betancourt, Roberto González, Cristina Margain, Fabián Dávila, Enrique Tovar, Abraham Carrillo, Viviana Contreras, Vanessa Ortega, Alejandro Uribe, Daniel Serna.
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Collaborators
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Renders.- Luis Frausto Correa.
External Advisors.- Casa Lux, HF Arquitectos, Grupo Bimer, High Tech Services, Figueroa y del Buen, Alusa, Ansul, CTC Ingenieros, Joaquín Ceballos, Cecilio Rodríguez, Oscar Rodríguez.
Lighting.- Luz en Arquitectura.
Landscaping.- Taller Vertebral.
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Builder
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Cinemex.
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Area
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Total Built Surface Area.- 720 m².
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Dates
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Start and End Year.- 2019-2020.
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Photography
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Esrawe Studio is a cross-disciplinary design atelier located in Mexico City. Its aim is to develop furniture, interior design and architectural solutions for museums, hotels, restaurants, bars, offices, residential developments and private houses.

The team at Esrawe Studio consists of about one hundred people, and includes from highly experienced designers, architects, specialized production technicians, and graphic designers, to craftsmen and women, administrators, and, of course,  a team of manufacturing experts that makes sure that each one of the studio’s products is optimally crafted –from conceptualization to the finishing details.

Héctor Esrawe was born in 1968 in Mexico City. He graduated from the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA) with the title of Industrial Designer in 1992. He started his career as an independent designer under the firm Esrawe Studio in 2003. He was a design professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana for four years and created the Industrial Design Degree in the CENTRO study house, where he was Design Director for three years.  

Esrawe’s designs include a great variety of typologies, from furniture and objects to interiors, commercial spaces, installations and cultural exhibitions. His work is characterized by the great passion and respect he feels for the objects and furniture created by hand, in combination with the use of technologies and contemporary industrial processes. This has earned him recognition and international awards such as Mexico’s Best Interior Designer at Firenze Entremuros Award 2019, Best of Year Award 2019, AZ Award 2018, Jury Prize and People's Choice in FRAME Awards 2018, Wallpaper Design Award 2018 and Interior Prectice of the Year in World Interior News 2018 among others.   

His work is present in the permanent collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, with the Centípede bench and the Vestigios jewelry collection. He has participated in different conferences and workshops around the world; his work has been published in numerous print and digital media.
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Published on: August 25, 2020
Cite: "Lightness and essentiality of Japanese culture. Tori Tori restaurant in Santa Fe by Esrawe Studio" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/lightness-and-essentiality-japanese-culture-tori-tori-restaurant-santa-fe-esrawe-studio> ISSN 1139-6415
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