Located in a historic 1930s building in downtown Hangzhou, GUD is a restaurant that specializes in hot pot cuisine and cocktails. Studio 8 was commissioned to design the building's alterations, interior and visual identity systems.

Like many old buildings in China, the villa was unfortunately almost swallowed up by the city from 1939 until it was handed over to the architect, with only a single facade facing the street. The interior has been renovated, extended and changed many times, from residential to various commercial uses, leaving the original interior unrecognizable.

The site that Studio 8 was given to turn into a hotpot restaurant included the original villa, built in 1939, its northern extension, and the ground floor of the adjacent building on the west. Studio 8 has always believed that the best way to preserve historic buildings is to give them new life by making them fit the functional needs of today. Once a house, the villa had no public toilet or industrial kitchen.

To repair and reuse of the historic buildings need to be very delicate and careful, in order to protect and respect the original building, kitchen, bathroom, and relatively spacious stairs and other service available to the public space, were put outside the original structure of the expansion of regional and adjacent buildings, thus keeping the '30 s historical building space space for pure dining experience.

The spatial design concept of the project is largely inspired by the historical specificity of the building and the Chinese cuisine of hotpot, which depicts the relationship between food culture and atmosphere in an abstract way. For Studio 8, the space of a dining project is above all a "canvas" for the gastronomic experience, designed to highlight the ongoing interaction between food and space.

Studio 8 has been involved in and completed a number of renovation projects in recent years, such as the genting Castle Boutique Hotel renovation, qiaoke restaurant and cocktail bar renovation, Yueyang Himalaya Renovation (under construction) and Xu Chongzhi former residence renovation (under construction). As an architecture firm with a deep blend of Chinese and European culture, Studio 8 has always been committed to the design concept of respecting history and local culture, and being based on and serving the present, to create one story after another spatial experience for everyone.