The award-winning restaurant noma worked with BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group to create its new home as a restaurant village just outside of Copenhagen’s city center.
Situated between two lakes and within the community of Christiania, the new restaurant is built on the site of a protected ex-military warehouse once used to store mines for the Royal Danish Navy. Imagined as an intimate garden village, guests are welcomed to experience a new menu and philosophy that will redefine noma for years to come.
Central to BIG’s design was the idea of dissolving the restaurant’s individual functions and organizing them as a collection of separate yet connected buildings. A total of eleven spaces, each tailored to their specific needs and built of the finest materials best suited for their functions, are densely clustered around the restaurant’s heart: the kitchen.
The new noma dissolves the traditional idea of a restaurant into its constituent parts and reassembles them in a way that puts the chefs at the heart of it all. Every part of the restaurant experience—the arrival, the lounge, the barbeque, the wine selection and the private company—is all clustered around the chefs. From their central position, they have a perfect overview to every corner of the restaurant while allowing every single guest to follow what would traditionally happen behind-the-scenes. Each ‘building within the building’ is connected by glass-covered paths that allow chefs and guests to follow the changes in weather, daylight and seasons—making the natural environment an integral part of the culinary experience.
Photo . Rasmus Hjortshoj
