Cocoro

Cocoro is located on Ponsonby's Brown Street in an old industrial warehouse. The restaurant can be classed as modern Japanese and offers a degustation style menu including Japanese-style tapas. The designers worked closely with the owners to create an interior environment that's modern, comfortable and natural.

The intimate décor includes a woven charcoal and chocolate coloured carpet reminiscent of subtle tatami-style matting. The ceiling is of sandblasted exposed concrete, lined with macrocarpa timber battens that integrate LED downlights and sound-studio foam for acoustic reasons.

Circular graphics taken from the logo have been printed on the up-lit, black walls. The decision to paint the main interior walls black was for three reasons, firstly with such a low ceiling we wanted the banquette seating and the wall to read as one and secondly the black works so well to enhance the cave like space and further enhance the intimacy of the dining area, thirdly the black offsets beautifully the backlighting behind the banquette and the other materials namely the concrete, macrocarpa and the clear gloss wall graphics.