Optimistic cafe"Barabul'ka"

International Design Award winner, Honorable Mention, 2015, Los Angeles, USA

Lighting Design Award winner, Honorable Mention, 2018,

Short List of Interior Design Award by ID magazine IDEAS.

Award winner project by #OxaKovalli ™

In July 2015, we received an order for a design project for an optimistic cafe with no less optimistic name "Barabulka." The task set by the customer was to create a cozy, stylish, and modern interior of the restaurant, where you can have a tasty snack, a cup of coffee, or a glass of fine wine. How to choose the cafe style in a wide variety of magnificent interiors of restaurants and cafes in Almaty? As usually happens, the name of the cafe, its location, and the basic requirements stated by the customer set the tone of the interior: the city, greenery, and optimism ... Hence the color scheme of the cafe: the warm concrete, plus the warm spectrum of natural shades of young grass and mature leaves and orange, as the brightest color on earth: the color of orange, happiness, and smile. Eco-design cannot be irrelevant in our gloomy time, a time of change and urbanization. Dullness of grey, a concrete city always and always compensate for the greenness of our beautiful city, and only colored spots bring us the joy of being and make us smile and enjoy life. The main idea was to transfer all the good that overflows the hearts of some people to other people. That's why there are "walls of happiness" on the walls. When you read them, the visitor, no matter what mood he is in, will find such simple and necessary words of support, happiness, and sound advice... There is a particular mystery... You are overwhelmed with thoughts, but when you look up, you see such necessary words of support: Live, Love, the best things happen when you do what you love...

Zoning of the cafe is focused on different categories of visitors: different characters, different moods, and different age groups.

The large room on the left is a meeting place for good old friends, romantic couples, and colleagues who appreciate the coziness, warmth, romantic and enveloping environment, and dim light. Everything here has been thoroughly thought out: Light, color, accessories, scenery. Since there are no windows in this room, we created false windows and installed a giant lightbox. The primary purpose of establishing a light box was not only to provide additional light to the room and visually expand the space by horizontal lines. The main objective was the idea of recreating the feeling of being in a cozy, romantic place, such as a cafe on the ocean. Living in the city, we often remember the warm days spent by the sea: its breath, the beautiful, picturesque sunset, the peacefulness, and happiness. Therefore, cold winter evenings will always be pleasant to sit near the "sea" and remember the warm days.

A central hall is a gathering place for people who come to relax, have a few good drinks under the Happy hour system and chat with friends while listening to music. I deliberately did not put a lot of seating in the bar. I wanted to adopt the foreign experience, where customers usually stand at the bar and chat after a hard day's work. They enter the bar between the end of work and before they go home to drink a glass of good wine or a bottle of beer at an excellent price. The goal is not to get drunk but to savor a good drink and then go home afterward. The bar itself, of course, takes center stage: it is bright, stylish, laconic, and there is no second of its kind in the city - fact.)))) If you look at it, it seems that it is filled with water. The bottom of the bar is studded with white pebbles, reminding a little of the sea. LED lights came very handily in a bar. First- BAR a BUL'KA- a bar that bubbles. Hence the idea of bubbles. Since the cafe is optimistic, the bubbles should be fun. Here to help was a LED system that could change 16 colors. That is, the mood of the cafe can be changed just by changing the color of the fixtures. And the bar's atmosphere is more than positive and joyful because the lighting fixtures look like balloons.

The room to the right of the entrance is a room of abstraction for young people. The idea came from the paintings of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) with his famous extreme modernist - abstractionist paintings. Like him, I wanted to give a dynamic balance. I hate symmetry and order, which tires me out in our humdrum lives. The mood of the room is dictated by a rebellious spirit. I created the interior against order and order - there is no symmetry in anything, not in the arrangement of the furniture, not in the pattern, not in lighting.

The laundry baskets I made into light fixtures are also from the "Breaking Stereotypes" thread. Who says laundry baskets can't become unique chandeliers that give the interior a coziness that the most demanding romantic couldn't even dream of?

Who says that ceilings can't be another color? Why can't regular wooden vegetable crates be used as wall decor, pallets can't become chic decorative partitions to divide zones, and palm brooms can't fly across the ocean in three days and become unique tropical flowers?

We paint our world ourselves, and only we decide what our world will be: joyful or dreary. And not always; for your interior to be memorable, stylish, and groovy, you need to use expensive materials. Everything is at our fingertips. Just look around: there are no limits to imagination! In your world and left by "aliens" drawings on the margins, you can swirl mirror bubbles, drawing on the walls of the essence of the universe - the galaxy.

And only in your world ordinary sewage pipes can become orange and quite unexpectedly lamps ... So, friends, draw your joyful world and do not limit your imagination to conventional boxes. Make up dreams, draw your positive world, bring goodness to people, and create!