Old Port Bydgoszcz
Architecture, Interiors
The Old Port commission came through CDI 2 Sp. z o.o. and Grupa Kapitalowa IMMOBILE, the Polish stock-market-listed property group whose key stakeholder Marek Szofer maintained a working relationship with Rise.Design. The brief was to transform an existing restaurant — formerly operating as Port 13 — within an 1830–1840 Prussian granary on the Bydgoszcz riverfront into a Czech-inspired seafood venue. The building offered the architectural assets that money cannot easily reproduce: half-timber szachulcowa construction with massive branching Y-columns forming a natural structural canopy, exposed brick, and a pre-existing indoor water channel running between the dining areas.
The design philosophy centring the project was a deliberate shift from literal theming to abstract evocation. The previous Port 13 restaurant had used a physical indoor stream and a working mill wheel to say "port." Cesky Port, by contrast, was conceived as a modern reinterpretation of a classic Czech pub — a "slightly more avant-garde gospoda" — that evoked the feeling of a Central European tavern through materials, light, and texture rather than through replica props. Wood, brick, and living greenery were identified as the three atmospheric anchors: the first two referencing the building's 19th-century half-timbered fabric directly, the third providing the contemporary botanical softness that placed the design in an avant-garde rather than purely historicist register. Deep navy blue became the saturating wall colour behind these elements, evoking maritime heritage and creating dramatic contrast against the warm oak and brass. This decision resolved an identity that is at once Czech in concept, riverfront in character, and contemporary in execution — the design serves as the physical embodiment of a brand built around hospitality, warmth, and things from nature.
The design centrepiece was a custom glass aquarium channel placed along the same axis as the existing water feature, but resolved as an illuminated glass-enclosed water body rather than an open stream with bridge railings. The aquarium sits between the timber Y-columns, its transparency and LED illumination making it appear to float within the structural forest of the heritage granary. An isometric construction detail at 1:25 scale documents the custom glass-enclosed design, including structural connections and glass panel specifications.
The design's most personally charged element is the hand-painted Portuguese azulejo tile murals depicting sailing ships, which Diogo Leitao imported directly from Portugal. The tiles carry both cultural autobiography — Diogo's Portuguese heritage — and site specificity, the maritime imagery of a riverside port location. Fish-motif border tile strips frame the murals in a decorative language that references both the Portuguese ceramic tradition and the seafood restaurant programme. The cultural layering is deliberate: a Czech-inspired restaurant concept in a Prussian granary, on a Polish river, decorated with Portuguese tiles by a Portuguese designer. The design draws on the full accumulation of identities.
Porthole door details, nautical rope elements, and upholstered banquette seating carry the maritime theme into the operational details of the space. Two bathroom design options were developed: Option A with fish-motif border tiles, glossy navy lower wall tiles, ornate carved wooden mirrors, and brass Art Deco sconces against marble counter vanities; and Option B with full navy blue walls to ceiling height, dark botanical wallpaper on the gable end, brass oval medallion storage cabinets, and gold-framed mirrors. The aquarium — though designed in full detail and documented at construction-drawing level — was not built in the final realisation.
Design was completed in 2020. The restaurant opened in June 2023 operating as "Cesky Port." The full drawing package includes floor plan at 1:100, four wall elevations at 1:50, the aquarium isometric construction detail at 1:25, and a top-down spatial layout render — a documentation standard that reflects the technical complexity of working within a heritage building under adaptive reuse constraints.
