bibo

An elegant building stands on Hollywood Road amongst antique shops and art galleries. Discreetly opulent touches suggest this may be a smart regional office for a prosperous business. Yet inside the building, people gather to enjoy fine French cuisine in a setting filled with important and exciting works of modern and street art.

Substance were challenged to create a restaurant where modern street art, classic French gastronomy, and the space which contained the two could work together in harmony. The inspiration came in the form of 1930’s Art Deco – a design aesthetic modern enough to serve as a backdrop to constantly changing and extremely eclectic artistic expression, but also elegant and comfortable enough as a spatial environment in which to serve classic French gastronomy. The connection between the decade, art works, and cuisine was made through a craftily invented story of an abandoned office building of a formerly prosperous French tram company, now occupied by street artists who express themselves by layering their art on surfaces with a history, tagging their ideas on the physical space that has since become ‘Bibo’.