into lighting worked alongside interior designers designLSM and architects Claudio Silvestrin to create a modern Japanese urban dining environment for Roka Aldwych in London. The Roka restaurants offer a unique style of Japanese Robatayaki cuisine and urban design, and are under the leadership of the infamous chef Rainer Becker. The warm and inviting interior was created through the use of natural materials, and a discrete lighting scheme that focused on the light effect and not the light fittings. The lighting was to render the colourful food dishes well and also allow flexibility in table positioning.
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The entrance to Roka leads to a Lounge Bar area before opening out into the main restaurant. In the foyer a Japanese bath is lit with a single spotlight from above and miniature led down-lights with warm filters graze a textured stone feature wall. The combined effect creates an atmospheric entrance and draws attention to the texture in the interior finishes.
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into used a series of low-level LED slot slight to provide orientation lighting leading to the Lounge Bar. Discrete rectangular lights are made from Travertine stone laminated to clear glass and opal acrylic, while strips of linear LEDs were mounted to the wall plate to create an atmospheric glow through the porous stone.
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The bar features an illuminated bottle display that is visually striking, and creates a warm ambience. Bespoke-designed lighting details to the planting boxes in the windows provide a soft glow that is visible from outside and which, alongside lighting to signage, makes for an inviting exterior to Roka Aldwych.
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Bespoke wall slots integrated within the oak timber paneling on the walls incorporate concealed linear led’s. This detail is in the Lounge Bar and in the main restaurant area and provides low-level lighting with a warm colour temperature.
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The main dining space used a combination of halogen downlight arrangement that give complete flexibility in lighting control, as well as seating and table arrangement. The feature of the space is the rear back wall that incorporates a stunning installation of illuminated Shochu tonics (Japanese grain spirit) glass jars. The display stretches the length of the wall and creates a striking focal point.
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into lighting carefully selected the light sources to highlight the emphasis on textured natural materials including stone clad pillars, oak timber paneling, concrete wall paneling and a stone canopy with a green finish sitting above the Robata Grill.
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The Roka Aldwych restaurant is a successful collaborative design which creates a modern Japanese urban dining environment that is warm and inviting. The scheme focused on low-level and concealed lighting details to evoke a warm atmosphere – lighting that veers from the traditional and creatively adapts to a textured urban interior design.
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Facts:
Project: Roka Aldwych
Location: 71 Aldwych, London WC2B 4HN
Client: Rainer Becker
Interior Designer: designLSM & Claudio Silvestrin
Lighting: into lighting
*All images and information courtesy of into lighting.
