A Garden (Re)treat!

Using impeccably finished economic materials, organic forms, earthy colours and lots of plants, architect Hardik Shah of Studio Lagom conjures a delightful garden restaurant in Surat.

- Rupali Sebastian

This restaurant was born out of deliberations over constraints… Perhaps its unusual moniker — Think of It! — in some tangential way refers to the intense thought processes that sought to trump limiting factors. The story began with an entrepreneur wishing to launch an eatery in Surat. Now, while the city may not be as space-starved as Indian metropolises of Mumbai and New Delhi, the restaurant typology sees a predominance of eateries operating within enclosed, air-conditioned environments. That’s not to say that restaurants with a considerable al fresco section do not exist, but these are limited to largely utilitarian establishments that pay scant heed to ‘place-making’. Therefore, when the client approached Studio Lagom’s founder Hardik Shah to design a cafe/restaurant, the architect’s thoughts immediately veered to creating something that the city lacked: a well-designed garden restaurant in the true sense of the word.

The leased nature of the premises gave rise to the aforementioned limitations — of budget and timeline. The client, naturally, did not wish to make a rented outlet investment-heavy; neither could he indulge in the luxury of time. He wanted things to happen quickly and economically. “Constraints create solutions,” states Hardik emphatically. “They give you directions and point the way. Here, the tricky part was to keep an eye on the budget, yet deliver a good-looking commercial space.” The broad vision? Keep the built-form to the minimum and use economic materials to rationalize project costs.