Canadian studio Ste Marie designed the 1970s and 80s Hong Kong-influenced Meo cocktail bar and restaurant in Vancouver's Chinatown, utilizing shades of pink, floral patterns and pink accents.
Meo is tucked away on the underside ground of a pale constructing within the coronary heart of the neighborhood, the most important of its type in Canada, and is a sister location to Bao Bei a couple of blocks away and Kissa Tanto subsequent door.
Ste Marie was closely influenced by the “hedonistic vitality” of the 1970s and '80s when designing the interiors and seemed to the pictures of Canadian photographer Greg Girard – who documented the Kowloon Walled Metropolis in the course of the period – for references.
“The dimly lit room is aesthetically impressed by Greg Girard's Hong Kong nightlife collection of the 70s and 80s and the clandestine 'love motels' of a bygone period,” the studio mentioned.
To evoke these areas, tender pink drapes and plush rugs with classic floral patterns had been added to the eating and bar areas.
Accents of daring pink are launched by 1970s Guzzini pendant lights that pop off the darkish wooden paneling alongside parts of the partitions.
A raised space with sloping steps follows the dropped ceiling and is wrapped by a banquette serving rows of small tables.
Behind, a pictorial scene of mountains, flora and buildings is mirrored in a collection of mirrors on the perpendicular wall.
Different built-in seating areas are tucked away in nooks and crannies, whereas friends may sit at leather-covered stools alongside the wood-paneled bar.
Heat, tender lighting from a wide range of pendants, sconces, lights and bar lamps creates a sultry ambiance and permits the illuminated blue face of a jukebox to face out.
“A shimmering jukebox, harking back to Girard's pictures, provides a way of nostalgia and novelty to the richly textured ambiance,” the studio mentioned.
A couple of curios and ornamental gadgets – a lot of them feline-themed – had been sourced by the proprietor from thrift shops in Taiwan.
Paintings, in the meantime, features a portrait of a Persian cat discovered at a storage sale and a vinyl-printed mural of a photograph taken in a North Korean resort.
“These components, mixed with the plush pink monochromatic interiors impressed by motel bedspreads, create an immersive setting that transports friends again in time,” mentioned Ste Marie. “Meo invitations heat and surprise: a playful escape the place the evening is at all times younger and stuffed with prospects.”
The studio, identified for its narrative strategy to modern interiors, was based by Craig Stanghetta and has places of work in each Vancouver and Toronto.
The corporate's different hospitality initiatives embody a “malt-tinged” artisanal flour store and bakery, a terracotta-tiled tapas joint, and a comfy Italian cafe envisioned as a den for a pet fox.
Girard's pictures of Kowloon, compiled right into a e-book titled Metropolis of Darkness, additionally influenced the manufacturing design of the 2019 sci-fi movie Alita: Battle Angel.
Love motels like those in Kowloon aren't unique to Hong Kong—architectural photographers have documented these intercourse areas in Santo Domingo and Brazil over time.
Photograph by Conrad Brown.