G九 SH

Category: Hospitality - Interior Design, Installation
Location: Lane Crawford, Shanghai, China
Size: 298 sqm - M
Year: 2013

G9 Shanghai transcends dining, becoming a spectacle of exhibition and participation. Atelier I-N-D-J exploited the unusual space to subvert expectations, merging bespoke design with high art and technology. A central 22m brass "runway" table anchors the space, leading to an elevated VIP platform symbolizing status.

This platform controls a 956-light interactive installation cascading into a massive site-specific INSA "Graffiti Fetish" artwork (67 sqm). Guests use gesture control via 3D sensors to manipulate the lights and integrated artwork. The design collides luxury materials (concrete, black marble, gold) and technological excess, creating a glittering, brash celebration of contemporary Chinese aspiration.

G九 exists beyond it primary purpose of dining and delves into a realm of exhibition, spectacle and participation.

From the projects inception Atelier I-N-D-J founder Ian Douglas-Jones led the projects ambitions — “the unusually proportioned space just had to be exploited and celebrated, early on I had persuaded the client that this presented an opportunity to create something that subverts preconceptions” All elements of the project have been carefully considered; from bespoke furniture to a super scaled interactive light installation that terminates in a major site specific art work by British Artist INSA, this collaborative piece sees the 956 lights of the light installation merge with the art work, working together as one.

G九 is a culmination of ideas that have influenced Atelier I-N-D-J from the studio's inception. Technology Industry Luxury and Excess collide, manifest in concrete, raw steel, black marble, shimmering gold, bright light and high art. G九 is a brash celebration for the rise of the Chinese economic superpower, more so glittered with gold befitting of the Paris of the east — 上海

The notion of luxury and excess reaches its pinnacle with INSA’s art wall. The interactive Lighting installation cascades through the space terminating in INSA's trademark “Grafitti Fetish” — an exploration of the iconography of modern aspirations.

A brass 22 m long brass table bisects the space acting as both banquette table and runway that dictates a simple spatial arrangement. Balanced upon a lateral beam a VIP dining platform sits high above the banquette table; this elevated position serves as symbolic elevation of status, an exclusive position of grandeur from which to survey the space, here users are invited to engage in the light installation and art piece — a 3D depth sensing camera empowers the user with the ability to control the speed brightness and pattern of the light with simple hand gestures, In this way the light installation and art work in synchronisation controlled by a singular user.

The light installation and artwork collaboration between INDJ and INSA mark an evolution of INSA's pioneering work with the GIF medium; whereby multiple frames are painstakingly painted photographed and animated digitally. G9 is a reversal of this process whereby the digital is manifest physically in the 67 sqm artwork.