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OLIVETO

49 Elizabeth Street, LONDON SW1W 9PP - United Kingdom

1996

This small Italian restaurants of about 50 seats was conceived as a “younger brother” of OLIVO restaurant (see concerned pictures).
The entrance door from the street gives access to a lobby which allows to reach both the dining room and the upper floors, where are located a waiting room, the toilets and a private apartment. Here a new full height glazed partition has replaced a formerly existing separating wall, so to obtain the maximum visual integration between lobby and dining room This last one is articulated in a bar area and two main rooms, and it is strongly characterised by a boiserie made with full height fire resistant wood panels veneered with white maple, decorated – accordingly to the restaurant’s name – with oversized silhouettes of olive twigs, in a sort of inlaid work that creates a positive/negative graphic game in which the dark and light areas alternatively change of position at each angle or corner of the walls. The floor is covered with ordinary tiles of mat granito-grès, broken in three or four pieces in order to obtain a craquelèe pattern. Most pieces of furniture - as like tables, the benches located along the walls, the white maple made bar counter and the bar glazed shelf unit - have been designed and made to measure. A sinusoidal hand-rail made out of a brushed stainless steel profile and a blue partition wall characterised by oval openings and a sinusoidal profile on each landing are the most important features of the staircase leading to the upper floors. On the first level are the ladies’ and gents’ toilets, featuring their graphically inlaid doors and a cladding of white maple plywood, assembled with narrow channel joints according to a sort of De Stijl geometrical pattern, while made to measure brackets support the wash basins’ floating shelves, complemented by taps and accessories designed by Aarne Jacobsen.