The Amla Room

A dining room of this size can read as intimate or simply cramped, and the difference is almost entirely lighting. The room had one good proportion — a long, tall volume — and one bad habit: a previous fit-out had lit it evenly, end to end, which flattened it completely.

We built a single continuous form in blackened teak that carries the bar, the banquette and the pass in one gesture, then spent three evenings on site with the tables in place, setting each fitting by eye. Nothing in the room is brighter than the food.

The charring is not decorative. Blackened timber absorbs light rather than returning it, so the pools of light over each table stay discrete instead of bleeding into one another. It is the reason twenty-two people can eat within arm's reach of each other and still feel unobserved.