Zhong Mei Shan Buffet Barbecue PLUS

Zhongmeishan Self-Service BBQ PLUS, the first upgraded brand outlet of a chain originating in Wudaokou, Beijing, occupies 1,039 square metres in the Lin'ao CITY PARK shopping mall in the city's high-end Aobei living circle. Commissioned by the brand from FUNUN LAB, the Beijing-based restaurant-space practice led by Fan Jie with Liu Zhaoping and Liu Najun, the project was designed from January to September 2022. Before design, the studio ran user research on the surrounding Aobei catchment and surveyed the site, deciding that the square single-volume plan should be broken up by inserted masses, with light and shadow layered to add detail and readability. The first move, "Form, meaning mountains and clouds," introduces a sculptural white staircase that climbs through the regular box, its free-flowing curves reading as a continuous mountain range and softening the otherwise rectilinear space while echoing the brand. The staircase is more than aesthetic: it organises a clear circulation that guides diners to the buffet stations and links all corners of the floor. The second move, "Reshaping relationships," recognises that behind every cuisine is the food itself, and behind every brand is human care; an open, interactive kitchen is set into the first floor, restructuring the relationship among space, diner and food and multiplying the sensory pleasures of the meal. From the first floor, a transparent private dining room appears "across the mountain cloud," recalling the classical poem about watching scenery from a bridge while the scenery-watcher watches you. The third move, "Light and shadow construction," arranges tables across the open ground floor in a staggered composition, setting different lighting moods for different functional zones to balance space efficiency with dining atmosphere. The staircase linking ground and first floor is backlit, softening the hard lines and setting soft against hard, bright against dark, rectilinear against flowing; the second floor is more private and dimmer, suited to intimate conversation and to small-group banquets and team dinners, greatly expanding the restaurant's commercial use cases. The project closes on the idea that aesthetics and commercial logic, food and setting, freedom and refinement are not opposites: FUNUN LAB uses designerly thinking to run the restaurant as a business, combining macro shaping with micro detail to make a large space feel light, textured and easy.