As with The Fat Duck, particular attention has been paid to the lighting design. Bates Smart and Electrolight also collaborated on a number of bespoke decorative light fixtures for the restaurant, which help to set the mood.
Strategically placed luminaires create sumptuous pools of light, focusing on the areas that guests inhabit, allowing details such as the food presentation, table tops, bar and kitchen, to emerge from the reduced darker background.
One of the many challenges Electrolight faced when designing the lighting scheme was providing depth and highlight to the images drawn from the ‘Historic Heston’ cookbook, that form a critical focal backdrop to the dining room and cocktail bar.
Electrolight Director Jess Perry explains: “The piece itself is a 5.4m x 2m print set into the wall panelling and complemented with a beautiful bronze mesh screen.
“We workshopped a design solution that involved a miniature linear LED projector with a bi-symmetric beam optic located between the mesh and the print to graze up and down the artwork.
“The main challenge was balancing the quantity of light between the print and the mesh to ensure the correct amount of transparency and depth was achieved. If the mesh received too much light, the print receded into darkness.”
Electrolight delivered the lighting for The Fat Duck’s temporary home in the same space, referred to by Heston Blumenthal as the best restaurant lighting he had ever seen.
