We strongly promote the need for a Design Concept, especially when expressed as a metaphor. This is certainly true in entertainment, but it’s generally true in all design. Especially hospitality design.Unfortunately, just because you have a design concept, that does not mean you will have a successful design.

Budget doesn’t matter. Here’s an example where the budget was simply flushed away. Yes, that’s a metaphor. Whatever they spent and it wasn’t cheap was wasted money.

Kob & Co. says that they produce innovative spaces, products and objects that generate unique moods and experiences. Not here.Not today.

Kob&co‘s Macadam Project, a brunch restaurant in Mexico is supposed to recreate or evoke the atmosphere of a museum. Yes, that’s supposed to be a metaphor. It seems no one on the team has ever been to a museum. They couldn’t even, we suppose, find a picture of a museum on the internet.

The gallery/restaurant space is supposed to then illustrate the museum concept using paintings by and inspired by the old masters previously inspired by the story of Creation, and Adam and Eve.

OK, sure. But it’s ugly.

Sure, it’s a contemporary atmosphere, with oversized paintings of the pure and innocent as well as the forbidden and the sexual accentuating and defining the space. Warm tones and classical <sic> features (ceiling, painting frames, gold and pastel) are strong throughout the restaurant, they do not take away from the cold and sterile results of the design execution.

Don’t get me started on the chairs.

The place simply looks awkward and uncomfortable. I’m sure it feels odd. The space isn’t big enough for the scale of the paintings, which really don’t evoke the Garden of Eden in any way. Let alone anything enticing about the Garden of Eden.

It’s just unappetizing.

I bet the food sucks too.

In show business, we have scripts to work from. In restaurant design, Sometimes the designer has to write the script. This crew needed to hire a writer. And a designer.