This project was a brief created by us, the student, for our final major project. I chose to design a restaurant/bar as I wanted to work on my spatial floor planning skills, as I hadn't had an ideal opportunity to develop these since my Branded Retail Brief. The concept of a Moroccan themed restaurant sprouted from my friend and housemate visiting Morocco over the previous summer so looking through her photos and hearing all about her experience got me interested in creating a modern version of a traditional Moroccan restaurant that would suit the needs of this country.

For my site, I chose the space currently occupied by Italian restaurant, Gusto, located directly on Newcastle's Quayside. This spot is prime location for many restaurants and tourist spots of Newcastle, including the Baltic, The Sage, and overlooks the Gateshead Millennium Bridge.

My initial inspiration for this project was the shapes and structure of leaves; deriving from the many Moroccan herbs and spices. From this I created some concept models using the structure of leafs and layering techniques.

I then was recommended to visit Lebanese restaurant Levant, situated in London. On my visit I had taken several photographs that would inspire my design... In doing so, with the restaurant being so dark and lit with numerous lanterns, I had to take flash off the camera in order to capture the colours, where the lighting had distorted and created a vine-like effect.

At this point in my project I decided to go from designing a restaurant/bar to also including a market area, which would become one of its main features and USP. When developing my ideas the photograph of the bar lighting in Levant kept catching my attention. The patterns and lines created from the lighting look similar to that of stems (relating to the herbs and spices) so this had created a big impact on my design.

The format of the building is focused on a traditional Moroccan building, known as a Riad. This is where there is a void in the centre where sunlight can pass through. I have replicated this in my design to give the essence of tradition in my design. I had also created numerous patterns for flooring and tiled walls.