LAGO Italian Family Kitchen by vari architects adapts an existing waterfront pavilion in Yihe Ecological Park, Chongqing, into a small lakeside restaurant organized around a new timber-and-galvanized-metal frame. Set between a cedar grove, a steep planted slope, and the lake edge, the project treats renovation as a layered intervention in which the old rendered volume, retained trees, terraces, and distant high-rise cityscape remain simultaneously visible.
LAGO Italian Family Kitchen Technical Information
- Architectsvari architects
- LocationYihe Ecological Park, Chongqing, China
- Gross Area360 m2 | 3,875 Sq. Ft.
- Project Year2025
- Photographs© Zhu Wenqiao
Establishing breath and order within the organic, bringing architecture back to a way of coexistence between people, nature, and the city.
– vari architects
Urban Nature and the Lakeside Condition
LAGO Italian Family Kitchen occupies a former waterfront pavilion on the edge of a lake in Yihe Ecological Park, in northern Chongqing. The site is not a retreat from the city in any absolute sense. It is structured by overlapping conditions: water immediately below the building, a dense belt of cedar and broadleaf trees around it, a steep planted slope underfoot, and high-rise towers rising beyond the tree line. The project gains its tension from this coexistence of parkland and metropolitan background.
The architects describe the initial image for the intervention as a lakeside cabin, yet the resulting work avoids literal rusticity. Its task is more precise: to translate the stillness associated with a rural edge into a setting where urban density remains perceptible. The lake offers visual openness, while the grove produces shade, depth, and partial concealment. Between these conditions, the restaurant becomes a mediating device rather than an isolated object.
Several retained trees pass close to, and in some cases through, the architectural composition. Their trunks interrupt terraces, align with glazing, and visually continue the rhythm of the timber posts. The sloping ground also becomes active, requiring a sequence of platforms rather than a single datum. In this sense, landscape is not a decorative perimeter but a spatial armature that defines movement, view, and occupation.
A New Frame Around an Existing Building
The main architectural operation is the addition of a lightweight exoskeletal frame around the original rendered volume. The existing building remains legible as a plain stucco mass with deep-set openings, timber shutters, and areas of exposed concrete soffit. Around it, vari architects introduce a separate structure of timber posts, continuous beams, steel components, and corrugated metal bands. This new layer does not conceal the old pavilion so much as place it in a new spatial register.
The frame reworks post-and-beam logic through a deliberately open assembly. Vertical timber elements echo the nearby cedar trunks, while horizontal eaves and metal sheets establish a measured datum across the irregular landscape. The result is a hybrid order: rational and linear in construction, but constantly interrupted by trees, slope, water, and shifting light. This tension gives the renovation its architectural interest, especially where the frame passes in front of shuttered windows or extends beyond the enclosed rooms to form terraces and canopies.
The air gap between the new structure and the existing envelope is one of the project’s most effective devices. It produces narrow side passages, shaded thresholds, partial exterior rooms, and layered views toward the lake. Rather than treating the envelope as a single boundary, the intervention stretches it into a thickness. This in-between zone allows visitors to read the renovation as a sequence of frames, screens, and setbacks, with the original pavilion continually visible behind the added structure.
Material Dialogue: Timber Warmth and Corrugated Metal
The project relies on a clear material contrast between warm Cassia or Kasnan timber and galvanized corrugated metal. Timber establishes the domestic register of the restaurant, appearing in columns, beams, eaves, shutters, interior ceilings, and veneer finishes. Its honey-toned surface softens the rendered shell and connects the building to the wooded setting. At the same time, the use of galvanized sheet introduces a cooler and more exacting language, preventing the renovation from becoming a conventional pastoral image.
Corrugated metal performs several roles across the building. It appears as spandrel, screen, canopy, eave, and terrace cladding. Its wavelike profile refers obliquely to the lake surface without reducing the architecture to metaphor. In sunlight, the sheets read as pale and reflective; in shade or dusk, they become blue-grey and matte. This variability gives the outer layer a changing relationship with the water and tree canopy, while its horizontal deployment reinforces the building’s terraced orientation.
The construction details remain visibly direct. Rivets punctuate the corrugated panels, steel tension rods and turnbuckles support canopies, and cable balustrades expose their anchoring plates. These elements are not hidden behind a seamless finish. Their visibility clarifies how the renovation is assembled, giving scale and tactile weight to otherwise thin materials. The approach is modest but disciplined, allowing the building’s relaxed character to emerge from legibility rather than from applied decoration.
Interior Atmosphere and Terraced Social Space
The two floors develop different spatial temperaments. On the ground level, full-height glazing and sliding timber-framed doors open the dining room toward the lake. A reflective white herringbone tile floor amplifies daylight and draws the exterior brightness into the interior. Slim timber tables, low-backed chairs, an open bar unit, and a terracotta leather banquette create a light arrangement in which the room reads as an extension of the terrace rather than a sealed dining hall.
The upper floor is more enclosed and domestic. Timber plank flooring replaces tile, exposed beams lower the perceptual scale, and furniture shifts toward lounge seating, long tables, shaded lamps, and warmer surfaces. Views are more selective, framed by windows, shutters, and the balcony screen. This contrast between the open ground floor and the inward upper level gives the restaurant a sectional hierarchy: public and porous below, quieter and more residential above.
Outside, the social program continues down the slope through a series of terraces. Pale stone paving leads to timber decking, planted edges, steps, and a lower galvanized grating platform near the water. Tables are dispersed under eaves, among tree trunks, and along the lake edge, turning the restaurant into a chain of shared rooms rather than a single interior. The strongest spatial moments occur where dining, circulation, vegetation, and water overlap, allowing the project to operate as part of the park’s topography rather than as an autonomous commercial insertion.
About vari architects
vari architects is an emerging international design practice focused on comprehensive urban-scale design, with work across urban planning, architecture, landscape, and interior design. The firm is dedicated to innovative design and critical research at multiple scales within the context of urban development and regeneration.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Principal Architect: Qi Fan
- Project Architects: Chen Mingli, Yang Qiyi, Zhang Xiangqi, Wang Liu
- Photography: Zhu Wenqiao
- Content Editor: Chen Mingli, Xu Xiaoyi
