Mar y Tierra | Doyle Collection

Mar y Tierra is a restaurant that provides Spanish cuisine and wine. It stands at the end of the back alley with high-level visibility. Spanish buildings’ usage change with lapse of time. And you can see this from the appearance of the buildings’ exterior or as a total. There are many interesting building examples where the old and the new coexist well. This time, Doyle Collection was inspired by this present Spain, when designing Mar y Tierra.

Mar y Tierra is a two-story building. Firstly, to make an impressive façade, we filled in the missing gaps of the wall partially to design one large surface that will connect to the other walls. However, in order to emphasize the new ideas that we added to this existing building, we did not just line up the walls but also changed the materials and lighting productions. This is to incorporate the inspiration mentioned above and we have succeeded to maximize the potential of this building.

There are an open kitchen and group seats on the first floor, and main dining on the second floor. We created a custom-made open ceiling space to connect these two floors so that they won’t look uneven.

This indeed will enhance the relationship between these two floors, and also will become one of the main characters of this restaurant. It will exceed the demerit of the decreased number of seats on the second floor.

We used warm style materials for the total design’s image. Images of Spain’s “Taverna” which means tavern in Spanish and “Wine storage”. To capture the customers’ interests, we removed the “newness” and organized with the essence of a contemporary atmosphere which will never fade.

Project Info:
Architects: Doyle Collection
Location: Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan
Architect in Charge: Aiji Inoue
Client: MEISEI TRADING INC.
Area: 101.0 sqm
Project Year: 2013
Photographs: Satoru Umetsu/ Nacasa&Partners
Project Name: Mar y Tierra