Pink. Black. White

The fantastically outlandish revamp of a 100-year-old building into a restaurant and pub where patrons flock to enjoy the theatrical space as much as the food is another milestone crossed for the team of Renesa Architecture Design Interiors Studio. Meet the talk of Kanpur town — The Feast India Company, aka, The Pink Zebra.

- Deepa Nair

Did you hear about The Pink Zebra which was spotted at Kanpur lately? No, it’s not a hybrid animal, rather an epithet given to the newly opened restaurant and bar — The Feast India Company. Designed by the talented team of New Delhi-based Renesa Architecture Design Interiors Studio led by young architect Sanchit Arora, the restaurant and bar opened to rave reviews for its novel and offbeat design, a rarity in this tier two city. What makes the project more fascinating is the fact that all this fresh design resides in a 100-year-old structure. But before we get into the nitty-gritties of the transformation of the space, some important questions about the brief from the client, and how the structure was before its adaptive reuse. “The clients needed something that has never been seen in a city like Kanpur and which would catch the attention of the people by making an immediate visual impact,” explains Sanchit. “The purpose of making The Pink Zebra was to speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of old and modern experiences, including that very experience which is inherent in art. The core idea was to create a design that was hybrid rather than pure, compromising rather than clean, to leave the visitor hanging in the middle of an artistic sea,” he adds.