Moshi Moshi Sushi Bar

A young, creative London architect studio, dRMM, has transformed a Neo-Victorian pavilion into a traditional Japanese style sushi bar. The bar is in Brighton, a once mundane seaside town and summer residence of the royal family located on the southern coast of England. The sophisticated composition of space, light and material adds a new dimension to the architectural language of Brighton's existing cityscape, and underscores the town's new image of a city reborn: In the past few years, the town has seen an unexpected boom - one reason why it is often referred to today as the "most southern district of London".

The architects Alex de Rijke, Philip Marsh and Sadie Morgan established their firm dRMM in 1996. Business steadily increased with contracts for smaller additions, renovations and new buildings. The team's reputation grew quickly after winning numerous architectural competitions. The office regularly invested in computer technology and training for employees to keep in step with the firm's growth. In 2000, dRMM landed contracts worth £9 million for the Kingsdale School in London and another worth £7 million for the renovation of Watney Market in London. One of the strong points of their work is the creation of extraordinary entities from prefabricated standard building elements. Their strategy reduces costs without sacrificing on high quality - as the sushi bar in Brighton clearly demonstrates.

The contractor for the Brighton sushi bar had already made a name for himself with the premiere of his "sushi catwalk" in three London restaurants. The concept, by which prepared dishes are carried to the bar on a conveyor belt, has since become very popular. Setting up a branch restaurant in Bartholomew Square in Brighton required an innovative solution for the renovation of the existing pavilion. The contractor demanded not only that it portray Japanese lifestyle, but also that it be a qualitatively high-class building that corresponds with and enlivens the public space around it.

The entrance to Bartholomew Square is characterized by the Neo-Classical municipal hall built by Thomas Cooper in 1830-32. The other sides of the square are dominated by administrative buildings from the 1980s as well as a block of hotels, which briefly interrupt the visual line between the square and the ocean. Adding a breath of fresh air to the plaza is the octagonal Neo-Victorian pavilion with a domed roof, which was built in the center of the square during the 1980s.

Cooper's municipal hall, with its columned walkways and the narrow, crooked lanes of Brighton that connect them, lend the uncompromisingly modern construction of dRMM its architectural context. Shaped in the past by the courtyards and fishermen's houses, these streets now attract tourists to their pubs, restaurants and antique shops. The architects decided to superimpose a rectangular structure on the existing octagonal frame of the pavilion, creating a 14 x 14 x 3.5 m box whose interior is also lighted by natural sunlight streaming through a cross-shaped skylight. The exterior of the newly created structure looks like a lantern from a garden in a Japanese temple. The facade is composed of 1 meter high transparent glass extending to prefabricated semi-transparent fiberglass elements above. Seen from the outside, the restaurant operation is a "ballet of legs"; the preparing and serving of the dishes remains hidden from view.

The interrupted visual line between the town lanes and the ocean is re-established by a diagonal axis that runs through the building. Kitchen, toilets and storeroom are located in a separate box structure. The interior furnishings of the sushi bar, designed by dRMM, consist of hand-crafted, finely detailed pieces of furniture. Contrasting nicely with the other furnishings in the room is the seating, which has the appearance of being formed and folded from one single piece of material. Behind the cocktail bar, lighted elements filled with rice draw attention to the traditions of Japanese cooking practiced in the restaurant's kitchen. The ceilings are painted in a fluorescent red that is also the color normally used on buoys. When lighted at night, the reflecting red light appears to be a part of the building as well as a part of the square itself.

The front facade of the pavilion is hung in a steel frame and can be fully opened and freely moved, allowing the interior of the sushi bar to become an integrated part of the square. Pebbles from the stretch of beach near town decorate and underscore the new spatial relationships created by the building and emphasize the town's closeness to the ocean.

The upper-most portion of the building facade was constructed with a patina green cladding system made of copper that encircles the building. Due to the cantilever corners of the building, the patina green copper strip appears to float above the raised square area. The architects' special design demands were fulfilled using a product from the line of TECU® brand-name products: TECU® Panels. Because of their high degree of prefabrication, they present an interesting and economical alternative to other materials. The cladding's seamless surface and the unobtrusive appearance of the TECU® tongue and groove panel joints help create the image of an unbroken strip surrounding the building, emphasizing the building's overall appearance as a continuous object. The tongue and groove panels, produced from edged TECU® sheets, are only one of many special shapes that can be developed for individual building designs in coordination with the TECU® Technical Consulting Center of KME.

dRMM succeeded in finding the appropriate design for the special environment of Bartholomew Square. When the facade is open, the guests in the sushi bar are at the heart of the square, actively contributing to the rebirth of this public place. The building offers an elegantly modest contrast to the powerful face of Cooper's municipal hall, whilst its outstanding design confidently takes a prominent place among the neighboring buildings around the square.