The updated design of the Gran Fierro restaurant in Prague

The founding of the Formafatal studio in 2015 coincided with the design and implementation of the interior of the first Gran Fierro Argentine restaurant on Oršilska Street in the center of Prague. Five years later, restaurant owner Juan Cruz Pasin was forced to look for a new location for his successful business. The choice fell on the premises on Mislikova street near the unique exhibition center Manes Gallery.

The size of Gran Fierro is 390 square meters (including the garden) with 163 seats. The restaurant is divided into three main parts: the main zone with an open kitchen, a street terrace with a winter garden, and a distant wing with VIP lounges.

Formafatal architects were again engaged in the development of the restaurant concept. In the historical building, which for many years was a pub and belongs to the UNESCO Historic Monuments Zone, they followed the original concept of Gran Fierro, and also used several new approaches.

“We have tried to use the existing equipment and furniture, which to some extent determined the general direction, used materials and colours of the interior,” explains Dagmar Štěpánová and Iveta Tesařová,  Formafatal founders.
“We have incorporated new elements into the design, again referring to raw construction materials, which, however, get a completely new function. Exposed steel HEB beams serve as bases for benches, and iron partitions visually share the space or became regiments of an extensive wine shop, designed from across the entire wall. The welded grid made of wire serves as trellises for green plants, as well as and garden fencing.”

“Newly appeared concrete blocks create a dominant decorative skin wall right in the entrance part of the restaurant.,” they say in the studio. “This wall is a symbolic legacy of a new approach – not only in the architect's concept, but above all the new mindset and philosophy of Gran Fierro and its owner, who exchanged charcoal for bio charcoal, which they started making themselves from vegetable waste from the kitchen. Therefore, inside each concrete block levitates piece of charcoal, the wall is like a show case, charcoal is like a jewel in it. With this visual concept, we continue to the back of the restaurant, where, for example, the vault of one of the lounges is created from levitating charcoal pieces.”

“Once I knew I had to relocate Gran Fierro to a different space, I felt that the new design should surpass the existent one. But at the same time it had to keep the feeling of the old one. So, I could only trust the architects of Formafatal for the job because they truly understand the meaning behind Gran Fierro’s design”, says Juan Cruz Pacin, Gran Fierro owner.