Shiroyama Restaurant by Ivan Krupin is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 Silver A' Design Award in Interior Space and Exhibition Design Competition Category.
SilverInterior· 2025
Shiroyama Restaurant
by Ivan Krupin
Client: Shiroyama
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Interior Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #165963The Design
About Shiroyama Restaurant
The main theme of the project is interpenetration and interconnection. The design combines metaphors and cultural symbols of Kazakh and Japanese culture. The theme of the Ryoanji Rock Garden and Wabi Sabi is harmoniously intertwined with the sacred Baiterek tree and the stylized Bozzhira mountain range. The surrounding nature penetrates into the interior in the form of stones taken from the shore, sofas stylized as boulders and fills the space with light reflected from the metal ceiling, as well as a natural range of materials.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
Shiroyama Restaurant is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Shiroyama Restaurant is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Shiroyama Restaurant is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Interior Design Services with Cultural Storytelling
We create memorable interior spaces that blend cultural narratives with cost-effective solutions. Our designs transform restaurants, retail spaces, and exhibitions into meaningful experiences that resonate with local contexts while achieving international recognition.
Discuss Your ProjectInterviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative fusion of Kazakh and Japanese cultural elements in Shiroyama Restaurant has earned recognition with a Silver A' Design Award - could you elaborate on how you developed this unique cultural dialogue through design elements?
Despite the fact that the task was described by the customer as a Japanese restaurant, I decided to look for something more subtle in meaning and concept. The restaurant is located on a hill, on the shores of the Caspian Sea and has panoramic windows. The first time I entered it, I felt how the environment, the sea, the wind, the stones and the sun permeated the room. I immediately decided to let this environment in through the windows, blurring the border and combining the interior and exterior. This seemed to me not enough and I decided to deepen the sensations of interpenetration and mixing by connecting metaphorical elements of Kazakh and Japanese culture to this dance. I deliberately avoided direct recognizable quotes and focused on philosophy, mythology and sensations. From Japanese culture I took contemplation and brevity, emphasizing with metaphorical inclusions, and from Kazakh culture I took a mythological meaning. And all this was united by the surrounding nature and the sea.
The natural materials and local resources used in Shiroyama Restaurant, particularly the local Elm tabletops and shore stones, create a profound connection to place - what inspired your decision to incorporate these specific elements into the design narrative?
I was fascinated by the idea of connection with place and environment. Letting the sea and the sky in through the windows and catching it in the edges of the metal ceiling, I added stones from the shore to this and now you see them on the shore through the glass wall and feel their presence next to you. The native elm solved the oak cost problem and strengthened the connection to place. The color scheme also matches the surrounding nature, which is quite minimalistic and monochrome, as it is essentially a desert and rocky steppe. White rocks, scorched grass and sand, against the backdrop of the endless sea and sky - this is Kazakh zen for hundreds of kilometers around.
The central Baiterek tree composition in Shiroyama Restaurant serves as a powerful cultural symbol - how does this design element contribute to the restaurant's broader theme of temporal connection between past, present, and future?
Being the central element and made in the minimalist style characteristic of Japanese culture, this tree, made of multi-layer sanded plywood, is also a sacred mythological symbol in Kazakh culture. Baiterek is a tree of life, whose roots go to the afterlife (past), the trunk is in the earthly world (present), and the crown goes to the heavenly world (future). Connecting the real world with the illusory, this tree holds the firmament. Reflected in the metal ceiling, it also reveals the path to a parallel world. The tree from ancient myths "growing" in the center of the restaurant pays tribute to the past, and allows traditions to exist and penetrate into the future.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The main theme of the project is interpenetration and interconnection. Starting with the name, Japanese translation of the name of the location, through the relationship with the nature of the rocky seashore on which the restaurant is located and ending with the interpenetration of Japanese and Kazakh culture, expressed in metaphors, colors and selection of materials and author’s elements. Each element in the interior has its own meaning and contribution to the overall harmony and atmosphere.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Total area of the restaurant is 286 sqm.
- Tags
- Shiroyama, Uniting, Culture, Nature, Restaurant
- Production Technology
- An interesting point is that to save money, CBPB slabs were used to imitate concrete panels in wall decoration. Characteristic local materials were also used, such as tabletops made of local Elm, and stones were taken from the shore under the windows of the restaurant. A podium in the center of the room allows patrons behind the bar to use regular chairs, eliminating the difference in height.
- Design Challenge
- The main challenge when creating the project was the construction budget, as well as the remoteness and isolation of the city. The search for cost reduction and the need to use local possibilities and materials were the main problems when creating the interior
- Research
- An important point in the creation of the project was the task of immersing visitors in a harmonious atmosphere of the environment and showing how local nature and culture can subtly resonate with another culture. My goal was to give visitors a sense of harmony between Japanese cuisine and their familiar surroundings and cultural symbols, without going into design for the sake of design in the form of just a good impersonal interior.
- Inspiration
- I found inspiration in the nature of the Caspian Sea coast, on the shore of which the restaurant is located, and panoramic glazing allows us to strengthen this connection. I looked for themes in Japanese and Kazakh culture to combine them. Thus, the central composition personifies the sacred Baiterek tree, uniting the past, present and future in Kazakh culture, which is reflected in the stylized inverted sea, while other elements gently lead into the atmosphere of Japanese contemplation
- Project Duration
- The project started in January 2023 and was completed in March 2024. Located in Aktau, Kazakhstan.
- Operation Flow
- The interior was created taking into account changes in natural light throughout the day. In the morning it is filled with sunlight and becomes light, thanks to the reflective property of the metal ceiling, in the evening the reflection of the sunset fills it with its own shades, and at night the restaurant is immersed in a cozy atmosphere created by accent lighting and a variety of backlights that highlight the architecture and interior elements.
- Image Credits
- Image #1 : Photographer Rauf Ismailov
Optional image #1 : Photographer Rauf Ismailov
Optional image #2 : Photographer Rauf Ismailov
Optional image #3 : Photographer Rauf Ismailov
Optional image #4 : Photographer Ivan Krupin
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