Natural colours for the Cantera fusion restaurant

reading time: 3 minutes

Landscape constraints? Porcelain stoneware is the answer - 1

Cantera is a restaurant in Rome designed by the Tamat firm, a fusion restaurant that blends traditional oriental cuisine and the flavour of Italian meat with meticulous sourcing and selection of raw materials.

Rome-based firm Tamat’s unusual triangular interior design for the Cantera restaurant, located in Rome’s Parioli residential district, gives the restaurant an irregular layout covering an area of around 120 sq m. Inspired by the meaning of the name Cantera, which means ‘quarry’ in Spanish, and by the type of cuisine, namely a fusion of traditional Japanese cuisine and the flavour of Italian meat, the project expresses the balance between oriental architecture and the use of natural materials and conveys the sensation of being in an environment that is welcoming – with warm earthy colours – and above all ‘natural’, accentuated by the lush vegetation arranged in various parts of the restaurant, interwoven with rattan lamps, and placed inside tanks lit by a soft light to make the atmosphere even more evocative and impressive.

Hence the choice to use ceramic tiles from Marazzi’s Zellige Crogiolo collection, in the small 10x10 cm size and in the warm earthy Cammello colour with a Lux finish, which feature a surface with an attractive handcrafted, irregular effect and chromatic imperfections reminiscent of the glazed majolica effect in the North African tradition, to fully cover the masonry walls and benches beneath the large windows of the main room.

“We were inspired by the colours of nature, with shades that evoke the colour of the earth, the installation of plants of various species, and the use of material coverings that give a sensation reminiscent of natural, handcrafted materials such as Marazzi’s Zellige tiles inspired by North African architecture,” comment Tommaso Amato, Matteo Soddu and Valentina Paiola, young architects from the Rome-based Tamat firm.