boema

2013

The BOEMA restaurant is located in an 1860 heritagebuilding in Cluj (Klausenburg).

The building went under restoration and structuralreinforcement. The restaurant is located at the 1st floor, where theballroom used to be. Unfortunately, no witnesses of the original decorationswere to be found, all of it vanished during communism. We had to imagine one,contemporary yet reverent to the past.

Our inspiration came from visiting the around the corner1440 Gothic Cathedral landmark. We replicated the gothic wainscot but herestopped the historicist approach. All the composition is based on irony, freshnessand contrasts.

The wainscot is painted in a surprisingly non-gothicblue-green color disruptive by its freshness to the sobriety of the gothicshapes but a close relative to the German-Hungarian green to be found on thedoors and windows along the street, same age as our building. The 60’sScandinavian style furniture matches surprisingly to the Gothic (possibly thesame elegance and lightness of the structure).

The roughness of the exposed old beams ceiling iscounterpointed by the elegant marble bar counter, the massive industrial aluminumpendants stand up in front of the gothic delicate arches, the opulent main roomgets more value by its vicinity to the rustic one. The rough reclaimed woodhigh table adds an informal touch to the otherwise elegant setting in front ofthe Austrian stove. The lighting adds a dramatic theatrical feeling through thecarefully placed narrow beam projectors and the unreal halo from the multitudeof hidden LEDs.

The custom designed chairs in the rustic room are acontemporary interpretation of the Austrian traditional but in CNC cut plywoodwith legs inspired by Eames’s.


Photo: Dacian Groza, Lucian Mandru