featured project
Clove and Cardamom
Merriweather, MD
Clove and Cardamom at Howard Hughes Center in Merriweather, Maryland, will serve up a new take on Indian food, offering both traditional favorites and global fusion cuisine subtly enhanced with Indian spices. They promise to leave this intricate taste lingering in their customers’ minds.
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The client asked a/k/a creatives to orchestrate a restaurant design that reflects their unique cuisine. They envisioned the restaurant to be contemporary and simple with colors and finishes that reflect the food’s native region, offering a warm, friendly and comfortable atmosphere.
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The exterior design consists of three layers of elements providing maximum transparency into the restaurant to pique the curiosity of those passing by. Stacked breezeway blocks placed against warm wood tiles and sleek steel sash windows create a lively, inviting entrance. At night, the patterns in these blocks are transformed by the warm glow from the restaurants interior to create a more formal and sophisticated look.
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The floor plan is kept simple with multiple seating zones including bars, a lounge, enclosed booths, semi-private half rounds, as well as rows of tow-tops and four-tops. Wood floors in a warm tone are used as a repeated key element to create continuity between the various zones. The enclosed booths, bar shelving, window casings and laser-cut wood panels share the same wood finish. Shades of whites with a variety of textured stones/tiles, graphic tiles, white laser-cut metal canopies are used to enhance the atmosphere with subtle textures and layering elements.
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I hope customers will enjoy not only the exquisite lunch and dinner but also the beautiful look and feel we created.
