Restaurateur Kurt Zdesar has just opened up Italian restaurant, Fucina, in Marylebone.
Fucina focuses on organic produce with artisanal technique at its heart, a theme that architecture and design practice, AMA, have mirrored in its design for the space.
Awash with handmade Italian glass, and a steel screen stretching from floor to ceiling, Fucina offers a haven from the busy streets outside.
Raw materials such as brick, marble, timber and burnt steel dominate the 110-cover restaurant, harking back to the origins of the word Fucina – “forge” in Italian.
All furniture, lighting and ironmongery is designed bespoke by AMA. Taking inspiration from trees, branches and roots, the tables seemingly grow from the floor whilst the chairs are fabricated from refined and machined branches.
The restaurant’s crowning glory is the uniquely curved and distorted ceiling. Handcrafted from brick, it pays reference to the inside of a traditional pizza oven and creates a bold and undulating, central focal point for the restaurant’s customers.
The ceiling follows the wall down to the ground, meeting the floor which has been carefully hand-laid using marble chips set into a traditional “terrazzo cement” border, reminiscent of Carlo Scarpa’s Olivetti building.
The lower-ground floor accommodates the Chef’s Table which is surrounded by beaten steel walls and overlooks a traditional open-fire pit.
