Designers of Hong Kong’s newest food hall, in Jardine House basement, draw inspiration from building’s retro look
- The biggest challenge for the designers of Basehall, in the space that previously housed Grappa’s Cellar, was to ‘avoid feeling like you’re in a dungeon’
- They used backlighting to brighten the interior, and batten walls – lime green in the bar area and timber in the food stall area – to give it a 1970s vibe
Hong Kong’s newest food hall has opened at a very strange time – in the midst of a pandemic – and in a rather odd place: in the basement of Jardine House. Both of those were a challenge for the designers at Linehouse, founded in 2013 by Alex Mok and Briar Hickling.
Dealing with that tricky space was the first hurdle Linehouse had to clear in their design. “When we started the project there were two levels in the space, one with a high ceiling, where the vendors would be located, and the other a raised area with a very low ceiling,” says Hickling. “It was a challenge to think about where people would actually be occupying the space and where they would move around the space.”
She and Mok converted the low-ceilinged platform into an intimate bar space. As for the rest, she says: “We wanted it to be very open to the foyer so that people coming in from the street didn’t feel it was a hidden and enclosed space.”