SDAWARDS FINALIST: Stunning new restaurant in Marylebone, ‘Fucina’

Andy Martin Architecture (AMA) are finalists in the Commercial Interior Surface category in the Surface Design Awards 2017, and there’s no trouble in guessing why with their fantastic offering at the NEW Italian restaurant, ‘Fucina’.

Acclaimed architecture and design practice AMA’s latest project marked the opening for ‘Fucina’. The Italian restaurant, owned by restaurateur Kurt Zdesar, focuses on organic produce with artisanal technique at its heart, a brief wonderfully mirrored by Andy Martin’s sweeping sculptural design of the space – offering a visual interpretation of contemporary Italian taste.

Inside Fucina, you are hidden from the outside world by a handmade expanse of coloured Italian glass and steel, a screen stretching from floor to ceiling, offering a haven from the busy streets outside. Raw materials such as brick, marble, timber and burnt steel dominate the restaurant that can seat 110 patrons, harking back to the origins of the word Fucina – “forge” in Italian.

All furniture, lighting and ironmongery is designed bespoke by AMA. The tables seem to grow from the floor taking inspiration from trees, branches and roots, and seemingly the chairs are fabricated from refined and machined branches.

 The restaurant’s crowning glory is the uniquely curved and distorted ceiling. Handcrafted from brick, it pays reference to the inside of a traditional pizza oven and creates a bold and surging, central focal point for the restaurant’s customers. The ceiling follows the wall down to the ground, meeting the floor which has been carefully hand-laid using marble chips set into a traditional “terrazzo cement” border, reminiscent of Carlo Scarpa’s Olivetti building. The lower-ground floor accommodates the Chef’s Table which is surrounded by beaten steel walls and overlooks a traditional open-fire pit.