“How do you design a restaurant that purposely focuses not on the food or the space, but on the act of cooking?” asks architect Nima Javidi. “What engages people?” For Javidi and his partner Behnaz Assadi, co-founders of Toronto practice Ja Architecture Studio, these ruminations were a major force behind their design for the newest Vitrine restaurant in Tehran, Iran. As this was their third collaboration with head chef Armin Milani, they were well-familiar with his concept: the kitchen should play the most significant role in the dining experience. While the first outpost was an intimate 10-seat space, this one occupies a much larger 187-square-metre site and can host up to 80 people within its intentionally raw walls. 

At the back of Vitrine, a chef’s kitchen with a colossal 800-kilogram steel and concrete communal table hosts intimate gatherings.

Situated on the second storey of a multi-level building, the restaurant is spacious enough that it actually contains two distinctly visible kitchens: a large active one up front to service the main dining area and a smaller chef’s kitchen at the back, with a communal table for more private scenarios. Both are raised off the ground just enough to give them prominence and provide a level of privacy to the cooks. “It’s like a small theatre,” says Javidi of the effect. 

A palette of industrial-inspired materials signals the vibrant energy of the space.

Far from moody and hushed, the eatery is more reminiscent of a bustling workshop, a feeling achieved through a palette composed mainly of three rugged materials: stainless steel, plywood and concrete. The site’s cement flooring was simply buffed to expose its aggregate, revealing a dynamic speckled effect, and then left as is; the distinct patterning was recreated in terrazzo for the individual tabletops, which are in turn paired with low-back circular stools of plywood. A beech wood bench, made on site by a local carpenter, wraps its way around the perimeter of the main dining room. 

The team designed almost all the interior elements and had most of them built on site, including the terrazzo surfaces and plywood seating.

The restaurant’s double-height wall of glazing (a fitting attribute for an eatery whose name means “glass display box”) overlooks a canopy of trees, pulling the greenery inside to further enhance the quality of the space. “The windows also reflect in different ways, night or day,” notes Assadi. “In the evening, the interior is reflected in the window in such a way that it seems endless; during the day, it’s the treetops that reflect back inside.” In both scenarios, the industrial-style lighting is repeated in never-ending symmetry. And in what is perhaps a surprising move for a busy restaurant, the designers incorporated very little in the way of acoustics, further adding to the sensory experience; by allowing voices, clatter and din to move through the space and bounce off each other, it creates a “unique vibrancy and liveliness not often felt in restaurants,” says Javidi.