Lavish but Humble – A Restaurant Design by Atelier MEJA

INTERIOR | EAT AND DRINK | TANGERANG | INDONESIA | 2023

Atelier MEJA, a Bandung-based architecture and design studio, designed the newest family restaurant Justus Steakhouse in Alam Sutera, Tangerang. The project is a new building project which Atelier MEJA designed from the architecture to the interior and it finished in early 2023. The restaurant itself opened in the last week of February 2023.

Natural color tones and materials are vividly seen in the architecture and interior. Natural stone, ceramic tile, and wood dominate the materials of both the interior and architectural design. Other materials such as glass in the bar area are giving an elegant accent, making this restaurant feel lavish but still humble.

‘We want to make a cozy but chic family restaurant. To make the room has a lavish ambiance, we made the ceiling high. But the use of natural color tones and materials made the room still feel humble like when we are in a family gathering; not pretentious, cozy, and soulful,’ explained Patricia Harwig, the founder of Atelier MEJA.

Justus Steakhouse as the client has an appropriately qualified management system thus we could become more focused on developing and finding a solution for every problem. ‘They let us decide almost entirely the form and every visual concept as the designer,’ said Patricia Harwig more.

’Usually, we took our time to make our custom furniture and lamp fixtures for our commercial design project. But for this project, we chose to highlight the wall tiles that are arranged in a customized pattern,’ she continued.

‘Atelier means studio and “meja” (table in the Indonesian Language) is a romanticizing of the studio’s history that started when she rented a room which just enough to load a table in it. Besides that, the name “MEJA” (table) came from the table’s philosophy itself that every idea we had, it’s always poured on the table first before we make it as a real product,’ answered Patricia Harwig when we asked her about the studio’s profile and philosophy.