The RAW:almond river pop-up restaurant is located in the Forks neighborhood, an important historic public area and green space in downtown Winnipeg. For 21 days, the temporary restaurant will offer new culinary experiences. The restaurant has three total seating spaces. Each seating space has a different guest chef for three consecutive nights. It stands on the frozen water at the junction of Red River and Assiniboine River and will be a part of the skating rinks, trails, and snow park structures erected in Forks during winter.

Our design proposal is based on three concepts:

1) Kitchen as stage
We propose a round building to emphasise the idea of the central kitchen with the restaurant being organized around it. The visible preparation of the food, as in a Sushi restaurant, serves as an event as well as a guarantee for quality dining.

2) Sensorial space
We want to present cooking and eating as an entire sensory experience. Through smelling, watching, hearing, and tasting, our spatial concept emphasizes food as the major component. For the customer, the space offers an active participatory role in the event of cooking which is different to a conventional restaurant.

3) Chef as artist
By staging the chef as artist, we would like to follow on from the concept of last year’s and the year before that’s restaurant, taking into account the growing significance of the kitchen. In 2013, the seating space and kitchen were still separate entities; whereas in 2014, the kitchen box had already been included in the overall space. For 2015, we propose one single space for seating and kitchen.

Architects: Jens Brinkmann
Collaborators: Taehun Oh, Quentin Rihoux