For the Ingfah Restaurant in Khaolak, Thailand, local firm Integrated Field have realized a shifting outdoor dining area composed of small interchangeable pavilions, each of which houses small or large dinner parties. Limited by the confines of the site–surrounded by buildings and without any views–the designers sought to reinvent the dining experience by means of using the resources at hand, namely the expansive lawn and the open sky. Diners graze on the grass, huddled in one of the lightweight structures that are arrayed along the yard, with a “piece” of the sky neatly framed overhead. Continue.

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There is a certain magic to the carnival, from its pop-up cotton-candy-and-corndog manifestation on high school baseball fields and city parklets to the full-blown amusement park, whirring with color and noise and packed with wide-eyed thrill seekers. Even from a distance, one can sense the joy of plunging momentarily into a sort of Technicolor escapism, of swapping real bills for tokens and raffle tickets, forgoing real meals for the sugar high of funnel cakes and ice cream, and trading any sense of the quotidian for a series of fleeting joyrides.

The carousel is perhaps a perfect summation of this unabashedly simulated fantasy, inviting riders to enter an extraordinary other world, but one that is knowingly contained in a finite circle. It is also the perfect centerpiece for a legendary bar in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans. The metal enthusiasts at Bastille Metal Works have recently partnered with the historic Hotel Monteleone to install a rotating pewter bar top to enhance the striking carousel crown that defines this celebrated Nola destination. Those lucky enough to snag a seat can sip on cocktails while basking under the lights of the hundreds of exposed bulbs lining the extravagant architectural centerpiece. Better yet, they can enjoy a gentle, carefree spinning sensation without putting away too many drinks.

[All images courtesy Bastille Metal Works]

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San Francisco’s Bar Agricole designed by Aidlin Darling Design, the winning design at the 2011 James Beard Awards. Image via.

James Beard is a household name in the food world. Hailed as the “dean of American cookery” by the New York Times in 1954, Beard blazed a trail for the American ‘foodie,’ seeing the potential of a fledgling food culture to become a celebrated national cuisine. As teacher, television personality, journalist, and cookbook author, Beard championed a passion for America’s diverse culinary heritage, which, with his help, has blossomed into sweeping movements in gastronomy, from the turn to local products and markets to new kinds of food journalism.

In essence, the James Beard Foundation knows that food is more than just nutrition. Food is “an integral part of our everyday lives. Food is economics, politics, entertainment, culture, fashion, family, passion…and nourishment.” Through their eyes, food is in close kinship with design: the comfort of a familiar kitchen table can beckon you to savor a home-cooked meal, and the cold city air brings added appreciation to a steamy street-vending cart. And of course, a restaurant is much more than its menu; it is an entirely designed experience, a single or multi-course program crafted to stimulate your senses and take you somewhere else.

Thus the James Beard Awards, which have played an instrumental role in shaping America’s culinary landscape, have aptly included awards in restaurant design. What Time proclaimed as “the Oscars of the food world” recognizes the visual and the spatial as key ingredients in any dining experience, awarding architects, interior designers as well as graphic designers for their contributions to gastronomy. The James Beard Award for Restaurant Design hopes to empower and connect talented designers with a new world of potential clients. To learn more about the award, visit the James Beard Foundation site, and submit your entry before January 20^th, 2012.

The ultimate urban dining experience: A Razor, A Shiny Knife serves lunch on the L train in New York. Image courtesy A Razor, A Shiny Knife.

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America may be all too familiar with theme restaurants, those take-it-or-leave-it dining destinations that use hyper-decoration to transport you to a foreign environment. These kitschy watering holes have somewhat lofty restaurant design ambitions in mind, but their execution usually leaves diners with the standard experience of being stuck in a tourist trap.

In China, however, the theme restaurant is experiencing a heyday. As we learned from Newsweek, a series of “red restaurants” are taking the format of the dinner show, already popular in Beijing, and spinning it to repaint a tumultuous part of Chinese history as material for sensationalist dinner theater. Read on.

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