We present another project by Neri & Hu, a rehabilitation from a basilica to a restaurant. The architects reinterpret the place like a comic, each vignettes is a room with a special materiality where different uses happen, getting the most of the place and history.

Project Synopsis

The Basilica, an architectural typology of a bygone era that is all too often reduced to a page in the history book or a stop on the tourist route, is revisited as a design concept for a modern Italian restaurant by Neri&Hu. Traditionally at the heart of civic activity, the Basilica was once a bustling public space—a church, a courthouse, a stage, a gallery, and a dining hall all at once—a place to see and be seen. Neri&Hu’s design intent for Capo was to embody the spirit of the Basilica within this cavernous space carved out of the attic of a 1911 building located on the historic Bund of Shanghai. Rather than default to an open plan configuration, Neri&Hu makes the conscious decision to carve up the restaurant into a series of distinct rooms at various scales, each with a unique character, and as such, capturing spaces as vignettes, whilst still embodying a consistent vision through materiality and spatial sequencing.

The central spine of the restaurant is a long and linear Main Dining Hall framed by rows of slender wood columns, with side aisles that run parallel on both sides for circulation. With the Crudo Bar and Pizza Oven as bookends to the space, the custom designed tables and chairs are rigorously aligned in a pew-like formation along the length in between. Wood and bronze accents bring hints of warmth and refinement to the rusticated gray brick backdrop, while hand-blown glass lights and leather strap details on the chairs suggest craft and intimacy. Above head, relief molded plaster ceiling tiles, evoking traditional ceiling frescos, brighten the space and guide the eye upwards.

Through the colonnade on either side of the main hall, a series of smaller chapel-like spaces branch off, containing the Reception, Wine and Cigar Lounge, Kitchen, Outdoor Deck and Private Dining Rooms. Passing through dark and heavy thresholds, one discovers these unique rooms, each featuring original reinterpretations of classic Renaissance paintings on the walls, from Caravaggio to Titian. The chiaroscuro of the painted brushstroke finds resonance in the contrast of spatial experiences, from a narrow hallway clad only in brick to a high domed niche smoothed with white plaster. The drama of the spatial journey is rivaled only by the spectacle of the chefs preparing the food itself, as glimpsed through various framed views of the Show Kitchen. It is a space that is meant to be consumed, like the perfect bite of food that brings you back to that which is at once familiar and exhilarating.

Text.- Neri&Hu.

CREDITS.-

Main architect.- Neri&Hu.
Team collaborators.- Lyndon Neri & Rossana Hu (principals-in-charge); Tony Schonhardt (assosiate), Erika Lanselle (senior associate); Elena Perez (sr architectural designer), Yifei Lu (architectural designer); Federico Saralvo (architectural designer), Joseph Lee (architectural designer); Christine Neri (sr. associate-graphics), Siwei Ren (graphic designer). Brian Lo (sr. associate – product design), Nicolas Fardet (product designer);Jean-Philippe Bonzon (product designer), Chen Xiaowen (product designer);Andrew Roman (consulting sr. associate); Ivy Zhou (material coordinator), Vivian Zhou (material coordinator).
Date.- September 2012 (Completion Date); January 2012- September 2012 (Design Period).
Program.- Hospitality - Restaurant.Reception, Show Kitchen, Main Dining, Crudo Bar, Pizza Bar, Chef Table’s. Room, Wine Room, Private Dining Rooms, Rear Dining, Office, Storage.
Surface.- 600sqm Capacity (Gross square footage); 126 pax (Persons Count).
Site.- 5/F Yifeng Galleria, 77 Beijing East Road, Shanghai.

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Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, founded in 2006 by partners Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office is an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China. The practice’s burgeoning global portfolio includes commissions ranging from master planning and architecture to interior design, installation, furniture, product, branding and graphic works. Currently working on projects in many countries, Neri&Hu is composed of multi-cultural staff who speak over 30 different languages.  The team's diversity reinforces a core vision for the practice: to respond to a global worldview, incorporating overlapping design disciplines for a new architectural paradigm.

Neri&Hu’s location is purposeful. With Shanghai considered a new global frontier, Neri&Hu is in the immediate center of this contemporary chaos. The city’s cultural, urban, and historic contexts function as a point of departure for design inquiries that span across a wide spectrum of scales. Furthermore, Neri&Hu has expanded the conventional boundaries of practice to include complementary disciplines. A critical probing into the specificities of program, site, function, and history is essential to the creation of rigorous work. Based on research, Neri&Hu anchors its ethos on the dynamic interaction of experience, detail, material, form, and light rather than conforming to a formulaic style.

Lyndon Neri, Honorary FAIA, co-founded Neri&Hu Design and Research Office with Rossana Hu in 2006, an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai. Neri received his Master of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design and his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Alongside his design practice, Neri has been deeply committed to architectural education and has taught and lectured at numerous universities. He was appointed as Visiting Faculty at Princeton University School of Architecture for the spring semesters of 2024 and 2025. Neri was appointed the Howard Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of California, Berkeley in 2023, the Design Critic in 2023 and the John C. Portman Design Critic in Architecture in 2019 and 2021 at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor in 2022 and Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor Chair in 2018 at the Yale School of Architecture. Neri co-authored and edited Persistence of Vision: Shanghai Architects in Dialogue, published by MCCM Creations in 2007. In 2017, his first monograph, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, was published by Park Books. In 2021, the second monograph, Thresholds: Space, Time and Practice, was published by Thames & Hudson, and the Chinese edition was translated and published in 2023 by Guangxi Normal University Press. Neri was elevated to Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 2025.

Rossana Hu co-founded Neri&Hu Design and Research Office with Lyndon Neri in 2006, an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai. Hu received her Master of Architecture and Urban Planning at Princeton University and her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, with a minor in music.

Alongside her design practice, Hu has been deeply committed to architectural education and has taught and lectured at numerous universities. Hu was appointed the Howard Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of California, Berkeley in 2023, the Design Critic in 2023 and the John C. Portman Design Critic in Architecture in 2019 and 2021 at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor in 2022 and Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor Chair in 2018 at the Yale School of Architecture. Hu was appointed as Chair of the Department of Architecture at Tongji University in 2021 and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, effective spring semester 2024.

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Published on: July 3, 2013
Cite:
metalocus, Ángela Solís
"CAPO Italian Restaurant" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/capo-italian-restaurant> ISSN 1139-6415
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