Singapore gets serious when it comes to gastronomical experiences. Combine that with an award-winning Singaporean restaurateur and you get Picnic, an out-of-this-world dining concept new in the scene. Taking diners and Instagrammers by storm, delivering the best in great taste in its tastefully done up interiors.
Located on the third level of Wisma Atria along downtown Orchard Road, the 10,000 square feet restaurant successfully brings the outdoors in, featuring custom-made food trucks, parked within the indoor gardens. Serving heritage favorites and contemporary dishes around the world, and housing its own third-wave coffee bar and a bespoke cocktail bar, the lighting concept in the restaurant is dynamic and vibrant, yet feels comfortable and natural.
Bringing to the table more than just gourmet dishes, diners are promised a fully immersive dining experience. The space has three seating zones: the flower conservatory, the Astroturf-covered picnic grounds, and the beer garden, all of which can accommodate up to 270 guests. All three areas have been designed with well-travelled, hip, social media-savvy food lovers in mind. Well thought-out details such as glass tables, fresh flowers, and lush greenery landscaped by renowned florist Harijanto Setiawan make each area comfortable to dine at, and always picture-perfect.
With a menu that changes according to the four seasons, the owner Cheng Hsin Yao researched and looked around for the most natural source of ambient lighting solutions, that could amp up the dining experience, by giving out light like passing clouds in the day to rosy sunsets and starry night skies.
Bright ideas came alive when restaurateur Cheng Hsin Yao and his architect and designer—Felicia Toh of Quarters Design Studio—envisioned a place which could offer the best of both worlds: the liveliness and exuberance of outdoor dining in a much-appreciated air-conditioned indoor environment set within a mall on the sunny island of Singapore, which is hot and humid all year round. The challenge they had was how to transform an indoor space within a shopping mall to mimic an outdoor park, which requires a lot of natural ambient light. Moreover, the deep floor plan of the existing Wisma Atria unit, which only had windows along one side, and the relatively low ceiling height made it difficult to achieve the concept.
"We wanted to create an atmosphere where nuances of street scenes could be distilled within the space—moving traffic, cloudscapes, floral fields. We imagined viewing these scenes through ‘window frames', and suspended overhead from the ceilings, so the atmosphere of the exterior would envelop the interior space.
We were excited when we found that Luminous Textiles could recreate softly nuanced and abstracted imagery within the space, without causing glare, which was ideal for the restaurant since diners would be sitting very close to these panels," explained Felicia.
To turn this vision into reality, Hsin Yao and Felicia passionately worked with Signify Lighting Design specialists to specify innovative and beautifully designed lighting solutions for this project.
A high-performance luminaire, Color Kinetics PureStyle was the perfect choice for illuminating Picnic's alcoves and accent spaces. Its innovative, aesthetically pleasing form factor fit seamlessly within the application areas. Color Kinetic ColorBurst Powercore LED Spots were also used as accent lights along the food street, cast artistically on the colorful food trucks.
