"In an age of scarcity, people tend to focus on absorption and assimilation. On the contrary, in an era of excess, the key is how to exclude and reject." Jiangnan, a region with a continuous cultural context for thousands of years, embodies a combination of nature and culture, disorder and order, instinct and rationality. As designing this restaurant, Nature Times Art Design deconstructed the existing definition of Jiangnan and explored more design possibilities about life by adopting novel spatial languages and creative ideas.

The Chiu, a "one-diamond black pearl" restaurant offering Chaoshan cuisine, opens a new premise in Hangzhou, located on 40F, Raffles City, Qianjiang New Town CBD. It is positioned as a private banquet restaurant that embraces river view below clouds. The restaurant carries a lifestyle in the new context, and also reflects the gradual integration of regional subcultures. In the collision and fusion of the new and the old, tradition and modernity, local and foreign elements, the design reinterprets the deep meaning of cultural symbols by defying conventional thinking and breaking traditional expressions.

The restaurant space mainly includes an entrance passage, a reception & tea area, a dining hall and several private rooms defined by different themes and tones. The circulation route loops around the whole space. The garden-themed elevator hall incorporates flowing light and shadows, which surround delicate natural, handmade artworks. Green jade, glass and flying "butterflies" create an immersive, surreal secret world, which brings surprising sensory and emotional experience to guests as entering the elevator hall. The restaurant is relatively independent from yet connected with the office building where it's situated and the outdoor CBD setting.

To present the beauty of Jiangnan in the space, the design fully utilizes line, color, shape and texture, combines landscape elements and objects representing distinctive cultural symbols such as snow, water, bridge and railing, and expresses them through contemporary art. Moreover, based on the structure and daylighting conditions of each private room, the design creates dynamic and varied "play" scenes to enrich spiritual and sensory experiences. Symbolic objects hidden in Jiangnan poetry and ink wash paintings are interwoven in the space, producing the interplay of virtuality and reality. The original context and the paradoxical imagination are contradictory but complement each other, thus giving rise to a new spatial ambience.