By K.Rahmah | Aug 10, 2009
Twenty-One: Innovation and Cohesion Under One
Richard Holland and Dan Thompson have, between them, almost four decades of experience in the food & beverage line. Having worked for others for some time, it was inevitable that they would put their skills to use and create something of their own.
Twenty-one is a testament to their multi-faceted and multi-layered approach. Working with longtime customer and friend, Mark Stephen Chew of Dplusm Creative, the trio have composed a building that is quite literally a “collection of spaces where you can have a different experience in each”.
Twenty-one comprises a kitchen, cocktail bar, terrace/lounge, indoor & outdoor dining room, a DJ and dance area; all under one roof!
Spacing Strategy
With the bars on Changkat Bukit Bintang all nestled and practically on top of each other, Twenty-one manages to stand out from the crowd offering their services without being cluttered or cramped.
Thanks to Mark Chew’s minimalist designs, both the interior and exterior of Twenty-one are sleek and modern. The bar never felt claustrophobic even on the busiest of weekends.
Concrete, glass and steel with black and gray accents frame the straight, clean lines of the upper and lower terraces. Inside, creamy leather seats designed for long hours of relaxed dining and conversation frame custom-made tables crafted for balance.
“In terms of our time frame when I basically said we’re doing it, five weeks later, we were opened!” explains Holland. “We’re pretty headstrong, we know what we want and it was important to get it done quickly.”
Chew explains that the building itself underwent extensive work. “It was basically a construction site when I first stepped in.” Yet despite the initial drawing designs on envelopes and napkins while sitting on crates, the spaces within Twenty-one are well-thought out with an unhurried touch to them.
“The original brief was about a variety of spaces. So our job was to make the variety of spaces cohesive,” explains Chew. Without an actual blueprint pre-conceived and modifications as they went along, he had to be on site practically every day; something he recalls with a grin.
What’s amazing about Twenty-one is that it has taken a limited amount of space, factored in their clientele’s individual dining and socializing preferences and exploited the key features that the building possesses while still creating an environment that allows for both Thompson and Holland’s different working space requirements.
Sleek Elements
This innovativeness seems to be an aspect of the working relationship between all three that complement one another. While Holland is quick to give credit to Dplusm Creative’s complete service towards Twenty-one, it is obvious they had a lot of input.
“One of the things we kept saying was that it has to be sleek and funky but yet warm and inviting. Those are very different things. So it’s finding that middle ground,” says Holland. That’s when Thompson steps in, “Our middle ground was an orange wall which I chose. Then when I was away on holiday they painted that over” he quips wryly “That was my design contribution.”
While there are a lot of opposing elements, from the very different personalities of the clients to the request that the space be sleek but warm, with a flow of balance, cohesion is very much evident. Even as Mark Chew is as different from both Holland and Thompson as they are from each other, there is organized creative chaos about this collaboration - an experimental, innovative and successful one.
See Related Articles:
|