Two Toned Perfection
The Fat Radish : Savannah, GA
Located on the corner of West Congress Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard, The Fat Radish Savannah is the first culinary foray into the South for the NYC based Fat Radish Team. With a strategic location within the larger city grid, the team behind this restaurant wanted to pay homage to the historic context of the site while at the same time creating a space with a defined design language and color palette that spoke to the current use of the site. Establishing a range of greens, to pay homage to a vegetable driven menu, the design team Basic Projects established the tonality of the plaster to have a cooler tone to read off of the warmer wood and rattan elements within the space.
The idea behind the two tone installation was to give better definition to the space while at the same time elevating the walls with the lighter hue in use closer to the ceiling. Working from Farrow & Ball’s color ‘Pigeon’, we worked from varying saturations to create two entirely new colors for the plaster installation. A two tone install is somewhat complex and the defining lines have to be recreated with every new pass of plaster to ensure a crisp, clean edge. The plaster sets the tone and gives a more laid back, welcoming sense of space with it’s softness and it’s textured aesthetic.
The real magic of working off of saturations is that you can create a range of color that doesn’t compete with each other. By using 25% saturation for the top portion of the wall we actually created the same exact hue used on the bottom portion (at 75% saturation of our color ‘Pigeon’). Yet visually the eye reads the range in a juxtaposed state. The ratios of our raw pigments were maintained in exact proportion between the two colors to create a sense of transition that blends harmoniously while creating variation within the single facade. Visually, the color might appear pretty simple and straight forward yet quiet a bit of work went in to ensuring the sense of seamless elevation was achieved poetically throughout the entire space.
The space created is clean, streamlined, and structured. Yet within these defining elements you still achieve a sense of nuanced, handcrafted, and a more organic imperfection. The trowel strokes give rise to a more intricate finish and bring about a sense of a relaxed and textured aesthetic. The rattan and the wood elements align with the plaster to highlight the emphasis on natural materials derived of the earth and provide a sense of place that brings the nature outdoors, inside.
The installation for this project was completed by the Charleston based team Dillon Construction Services. Executed over the course of 2 weeks, the initial coat of plaster installed was the foundation layer of our Veneer plaster in it’s natural white hue. This layer serves as a great foundation layer and serves as a bond to the underlying substrate – in this case a level 3 finish primed surface. From here the delineation lines were created and the second coat of base in the particular colors were applied to a smooth coat trowel finish. Removing all tape to create new, clean edges allowed for re-taping of the edges and defining line and from here the final coat of finish – tinted to it’s respective colors, was applied to create the overall end result for a 3 coat lime plaster. Beautifully designed and beautifully executed.
