Ara Pizza is a new fast food restaurant in Barcelona designed by Pablo Tellez Studio, a young creative office who started up just last year.

Located in the main commercial road of Sant Quirze, Ara Pizza is housed in an ex-smith's workshop. Almost rectangular in shape, the best feature of the space was an outstanding high ceiling which Pablo Tellez Studio chose as the key focal point for the new pizzeria.

The space is divided in two main areas, one dedicated to produce take away or home service deliveries and a second floor area, dedicated to serve customers on site. This second area, where most of the shop activity takes place, where different movements and people get together, was solved by Pablo Tellez Studio through linking prism shapes spaces at different heights, thus producing different light effects on walls that invites to enjoy the view from different positions, creating different spaces inside the same room.

Colours play a big role in this project, as the room is finished in very neutral tones, that contrast with the staff working area, where warmer colours have a more informative function, together with the restaurant corporative logo.

The study of people's disposition in this type of area made it crucial for the studio to design a special shaped table, built in Valchromat and cut with CNC. These tables can be overlapped - rather like different segments of a silkworm - adapting every set of tables to the spatial circumstance defined by each group of people that occupies the space during the day.

Dr.Yes chairs from Kartell were selected to accompany the tables and custom artwork bucks the conventional fast-food image trend.

M.E. thinks this fresh interior is a clever use of space that manages to be both spacious and contemporary, whilst retaining the perfect friendly atmosphere for dining.

Photography: Juan Ventura