You are born different, worthy of myriad kinds of life.
We must set off on the road and never stop before reaching the destination.
On the Road—Jack Kerouac

Before knowing the owners of Sebun Japanese Cuisine Restaurant, the Tsukiji Market in our eyes is just another seafood market covering a large number of categories and of a large scale in Japan. Nothing special. However, it never crossed our mind that in the minds of these owners of this Japanese Restaurant, the Tsukiji Market has essentially become a pilgrimage, or a holy city. 

The owners of Sebun Japanese Cuisine Restaurant has told the story movingly that this seafood market inherited from the Edo Period in Japan has symbolized more spirituality and a sense of calling behind its first look, which more likely transcends the reality and time. 

Being heavily inspired by the Tsukiji Market, Sebun Japanese Cuisine Restaurant has used this as an opportunity for beginning to promote, on the basis of the original brand, the highest level of Japanese Cuisine so far—Sebun Japanese Cuisine Restaurant·Sashimi*Barbecue·Specialized Market, which is a tribute work crystalizing the ingenuity and efforts of all the team members.

“A flame prone ot ideals.”
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Before opening this new restaurant, Sebun Japanese Cuisine has been run for many years, and has also won the favors of a large group of loyal customers. Whether to continue using the previous running model, taking a steadier and safer market road, or to invest heavily and build an exclusive or even subversive Sebun is a question. Eventually, the owners of Sebun have chosen the latter option. While looking for their ideal interior design team, they have from time to time revealed their solitude in bravery characterized by an idealism, which has peacefully met with our values. We are especially amazed by the remarks of the owners saying that “We can give up anything but good food ingredients”! This has also made us determined to contemplate over how to build a Japanese Cuisine Restaurant offering both delicious food and visual enjoyment. 

Each choice of consumption is actually choosing a lifestyle. The three meals composing your four seasons should be seriously taken care of, and also subtly pay attention to each and every detail that can please you in your life. In the city of Chengdu, the urban long lanes and the local urbanity have kept people slow and determined in their own time zones, who are free to choose what they like or inject anticipation into the time of unknown called future. Thus, we hope to create a celebration ceremony—a work of tribute crossing time and space.

Attraction, Small Lights,Miracle,Exploration,Entry,Inclusiveness

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Sebun has introduced you into their world through building a narrow and long underwater tunnel entrance, inviting you to bow down and join the feast. Immerse yourself in the ambience.

“We will retell the brand story in our design languages, passing on the brand values. We will use some necessary design methods to realize the promises we have made in the story. Furthermore, we aim to create a correlated ultimate experience for each visiting customer.”

“Replacement” for changing and flashing scenarios
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The sporadically flooding and resting water waves on the glass rooftop of the entrance have projected the lights and shadows on the ground, flickering subtly, creating a romantic feeling of roaming and exploring on the ocean bottom. However, such kind of wave lights and water shadows are not just restrained to the entrance, but are intertwined around the corners and in the compartments and corridors of the restaurant, constructing a picturesque scene featuring the images and shadows. 

Once you step into the porch featuring swaying wave lights, the customers will be able to follow the winding motion lines, casting their glimpses at some lighting scenes with hazy contours. Under the corridors lie the green moss luminated by the dim yellow lights. Customers will feel like walking into a bizarre world with all the shadows and lights, already immersing themselves naturally into the scenarios and ambiences we have created for them in advance as a design team.

Our interior design team has borrowed the cultural messages of the Tsukiji Market as the mainline of spatial form creation, featuring the critical design elements of “Steampunk, Deep Ocean Bottom, and Street Sceneries in the Edo Period”. We have thoroughly separated the lighting system of the restaurant from that of the shopping mall and combined the devices with pronounced design languages in order to enable the customers setting feet in Sebun to detach themselves from the outside world in one instance and enter the Sebun New World both visually and sensorily. They can feel a mysterious and tranquil ambience. 

“Sensation” for a feeling of the market
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The longing for and imagination of the Tsukiji Market has become the main axis of spatial formation. However, except that the storefront presentation can enable the customers to travel in their minds to the Tsukiji Market, in the minds of the owners of the restaurant, they hope to enable the customers to enjoy a “separated” environment at Sebun through the design contexts. At this moment, and in another moment, the looks presented in the initial beauty and post changes are actually a “measurement” of externalizing the inner world. 

After emerging from the ocean surface, in the next second, another déjà vu filled with urbanity comes into the eyes of the customers. The mottled and faint murals on the walls seem to a calling in the hazy while shallow lights. The conversion of the material nature of the charcoal fire has furthermore created a contemporary mysterious ambience, making the urbanity context attached with more modern-day meanings. 

Integration：Promoting a mutal integration
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After customers turned around the corners, and stepped into the inner hall, they will experience a feeling of “mental relief”. The Robatayaki and the liquor area located in the middle area has enclosed an area supporting the daily function of roasting food, as well as holding special activities such as “liquor sacrifices” and once-in-a-month fish feasts. The owners of the restaurant hope that this area can offer a taste of a small liquor shop and mortal life. The customers can drink liquor and eat meat near the bar counter, appreciate the extremely ritualized “sacrifices” performances, and participate in the once-in-a-month fish feasts. We hope to enable the customers to mingle through an application of different “themes”, “functions”, and “rituals”.

We have expressed the urbanity of a seafood market surrounding the concept of Robatayaki in the space, and re-created according to our imaginations of different scenarios in the seating areas in other dining areas. Meanwhile, we have used the doors and fans elements commonly seen in the ancient Chinese architecture to make the separated compartments, and formed a chime formation through using the refactoring techniques, enabling people to immerse themselves in the atmosphere to feel the Oriental beauty, featuring an internal and external exchange and a harmony between the dynamic and the static…However, the compartments hidden in more secluded locations in the front area and the back area are the spaces for “banquets”, where the gatherings seem to be more solemn and private in contrast to the relatively freer and cozier hall.

Lights not limited to brightness
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Charcoal fire sends out the red light. Ocean waves send out the blue light. The red lanterns lighted at nights send out flickering lights to the corners of your eyes…

By breaking the spatial limitations, our design team has woven the miraculous scenery resembling an urban market teeming with urbanity hidden beneath “a deep ocean”, passing on happy and warm feelings to the foodie customers. Meanwhile, we have utilized the water wave lights and shadows, sparkling charcoal fire, and the ghostly liquor sacrifices rituals to adequately express the freshness and delicacy of the food ingredients and provide a cultural experience of “a bizarre world”, thus to reach the effect of winning the loyalty of our foodie customers who might as well promote our brand spontaneously.