Robot 3 Studio has converted old ramen shop into a lucky bar made up of a metal hut in China. The projects is created in a very narrow space with limited budget in poor location. Led by the architects Fei Pan, Wang Zhi, the basic design approach of this smallest space is to switch perspective, make ultralow price and make it wormhole. 

The new bar offers lower sitting places to make people closer, creating like squatting based on human instincts. The whole area 76 square-meter and introduces new architectural skin in the interior. 

The designers use very cheap materials to transform the shop including galvanized iron plate, PVC curtain and paint. Each ring road of Beijing is a rough division of social class. The invisible wall made up of power and wealth divides Beijing into pieces of fixed territories, some of which are inaccessible for majority of people in their whole life. Each territory has a stable hierarchical structure and complicated codes. Design is the way to overcome the obstacles and crack the code.

Huoying is located in the “margin” of Beijing. As the reference of it, Sanlitun area is the center of fashion and exchange of information in Beijing. The place takes 1.5 hours to drive from Huoying to Sanlitun with the distance of 25 km. But, the designers believe that the margin of Huoying correlates with the center of Sanlitun. 

There will be no center if there is no margin. The architects are designing a wormhole in this spacetime to make the margin and the center overlapped. The wormhole is the Metal Hut. Wormhole Theory is proposed by Einstein and perfected by Nathan Rosen. Wormhole is a multi-dimensional space tunnel connecting two distant spaces.

The psychological change from our work to life could not be instantly changed like a switch. The studio may still continue to work after returning home. Therefore, the designers take the Metal Hut as a psychological switch. Squatting is a basic human instinct position on a picnic. This “informal” dining posture is relaxing and getting the diners more intimate. Squatting view also permits the diners to see the usually-neglected low dimension of the world.

Material is just a word, with no special preference. The architects have chosen a few uncommon materials, with “iron board” as subject, “soft curtains” as attributive, and “a real tree” as the main verb. Metaphorically, it means soft metal is the power to guard our nature.

Project Facts

Project name: Metal Hut - Lucky Bar 

Design Company: Robot 3 Studio 

Designers: Fei Pan, Wang Zhi 

Location: Kexing West Road, No. 43, Changping District, Beijing, China 

Type: Restaurant 

Area: 76m2 

Design period: March 2016-April 2016

Completion time: May 2016

Contractor: Beijing Jingchuanjiamei Decoration Co., Ltd 

All images © Xi-Xun Deng

> via Robot 3 Studio