The clients required a distinctive look that reflected Japanese cuisine but with a modern twist tin order to offer a distinct point of difference from the adjacent fast food offers which include McDonald’s and Dunkin’Doughnuts. As the site is almost at the end of a very long concourse and no out-goes were permitted our clients were keen to have the frontage illuminated and as eye-catching as possible.

We designed a modern take on traditional Japanese architecture which was built and clad in wood so was able to be prefabricated off site due to the limited access to site for construction. Airport regulations only permit a 4 hour construction window daily for site work from midnight till 4 AM, including load-in, equipment set-up and breakdown. This equated to an actual build time on site of around 40 hours. We had to allow for only limited on-site cooking as was no provision kitchen extract.

Our clients brief was to refurbish the Hayama’s existing front-of- house and shopfront and to bring it in-line with their new brand identity making it more visible and exciting. We needed to present a distinctive look that reflected Japanese cuisine but with a modern twist in order to offer a distinct point of difference from the adjacent fast food offers.

We redesigned the service counter, moving it further back from the lease line and included two central on-bench sushi display. This is mainly for take-out consumption, however, in addition, we provided 5x fixed seats for customers to enjoy the fresh products at the counter which also activates this area making it more visible. Existing cladding to the front-of-house columns and the bulk-head were also replaced with an updated design approach to compliment our client’s latest brand identity (also developed by us).  We developed the “Cherry Tree: graphic from some stock images as a prompt to the Japanese cuisine. We overlaid and illuminated a bulkhead over the counter top to make our corner site more visible and to light the working surface below.