MEI Korean Warsaw Restaurant

Commissioned through a personal network referral, MEI Korean Grill and Sushi transformed what was described as "basically a canteen with no design" into a destination Korean BBQ restaurant in Warsaw's Powisle district, adjacent to the Arkady Mostu Poniatowskiego shopping mall near the Korean Cultural Centre. The 61.35 square metre fit-out was delivered in a 2.5-month fast-track programme from September to November 2018, with a 73-page documentation set produced in that compressed timeline.

The architecture of the space is defined by a single concentrated design gesture: a suspended pine timber lattice ceiling spanning 10.4 by 5.9 metres at a 120-centimetre structural module. This element performs three functions simultaneously — aesthetic, technical, and cultural. Aesthetically, it creates a warm hanok-inspired timber canopy that transforms the room's vertical character. Technically, it conceals the HVAC system and carries the BBQ ventilation infrastructure, with individual extraction hoods positioned above each table and integrated directly into the lattice grid. Culturally, it references traditional Korean architecture while producing an atmosphere closer to a Japanese izakaya than a conventional restaurant — the warm lantern glow filtering through pine timber creates the project's most powerful spatial quality.

Eleven hanging rectangular paper lanterns supplement the ambient light with warm pools above the dining tables. A concrete-rendered bar counter with beech laminate surface anchors the front-of-house. Behind the bar, a backlit soju bottle display grid in a regular matrix creates a luminous feature wall. A neon lightbox displaying the Ming character — the Chinese character for "bright" used in the restaurant name MEI — provides the signature typographic element above the bar, casting warm light across the beech veneer cladding.

Two wall treatment options were presented. Option 1 combines exposed concrete plaster with hand-painted cherry blossom murals — the mural approach deliberately restrained, achieving a delicate pink wash on raw concrete surface rather than a bold graphic statement. The concrete grounds the space in a raw contemporary material while the cherry blossom introduces cultural specificity at a painterly rather than commercial scale. Option 3 takes a different direction, replacing the concrete with full-height beech veneer timber cladding that intensifies the warmth of the lattice ceiling above, creating a more fully enveloping timber-dominated atmosphere.

Shoji-inspired translucent aluminium-framed screens complete the Korean vernacular references at the perimeter, filtering the view from the mall arcade. Porcelain flooring in a concrete-look finish runs across the full dining area. The cross-cultural complexity of the project — Korean client, Warsaw venue, Bydgoszcz design studio — extended Rise.Design's geographic reach to the Polish capital for the first time.

The project was noted as one of the standout commissions of 2018. The integration of functional BBQ ventilation into a legible architectural element — rather than treating extraction as an exposed industrial afterthought — is the design decision that elevates the space from a technical solution into a spatial experience.