fold

Architecture and interiors, Copenhagen.

Work Hospitality

Kiln

Nordvest, Copenhagen. 2025. Built.

A restaurant with exposed silver ducts under a grey ceiling, a green column, oak chairs with round backs, a long oak table and a lit bar at the back.

The room at six o’clock. The ducts are painted a single silver and the chairs are oak with a steel frame.

The building had been a tile works, and the ground floor still had its ducts, pipes and a cast concrete column. The chefs wanted a room that felt like a workshop at lunch and a dining room at night. We kept the workshop and added light.

What we took away

We removed the ceiling, the partitions and the floor finishes, down to the slab. The slab was good. We ground it and kept it as the floor of the bar and kitchen, and added a terrazzo floor in the dining room, cast in two pours against brass dividing strips.

The walls had lost most of their plaster. We repaired what was loose and left the rest to show its age.

A restaurant with a timber ceiling on beams, a long pale table set for two, a marble-topped open kitchen counter and cooks at work behind it.
The kitchen counter, where six seats look straight at the pass.

Services in view

A restaurant needs a lot of air. The ventilation ducts are 600 millimetres wide, and hiding them would have meant dropping the ceiling by a metre. We left them where they are, painted them one silver, and ran them straight along the room so they read as a line.

The lights hang from the ducts on brass rods. That is cheaper than a separate grid, and it means that all the technical parts of the room are in one place.

The bar

The bar is eight metres long with a zinc top, bent from a single sheet at a workshop in Vejle. Zinc takes a mark from every glass, and in a month the whole top has gone from pale to a deep grey with a pattern of rings. The owners call it the calendar.

Before and after

The restaurant dining room with silver ducts, round-backed oak chairs, a long table in the foreground and a lit back bar.
An empty room with cream walls, two tall doors and a sash window, litter and torn flooring across the floor.
The dining room, before and after. Before: Before. The old works office, with the floor opened up for new drains. After: After. The same room, with the ceiling removed and the ducts left in view.

Drawings

Plan of Kiln Plan at floor level, with the street to the south. Scale 1 to 100. Rooms: Dining room, Bar, Kitchen, Entry and cloaks. Dining room 154 m² Bar 32 m² Kitchen 42 m² Entry and cloaks 24 m² 18 m 14 m 5 m N
Plan at floor level, with the street to the south. Scale 1 to 100.
Cross section of Kiln Cross section through the dining room, looking east. Scale 1 to 100. The roof is flat, with the eave at 4.1 metres and the highest point at 4.1 metres. Levels: Floor level, Underside of ducts. Floor level 0 m Underside of ducts 3.2 m Span 14 m Eave 4.1 m Ridge 4.1 m
Cross section through the dining room, looking east. Scale 1 to 100.

Materials

What the building is made of, where each material is used, and who supplied it.

  • Close photograph of pale oak veneer with a fine straight grain.

    Oak

    Tables, chairs and the booth panelling

    Ravnkilde Sawmill

  • Close photograph of terrazzo tiles, with small chips of stone set in a pale binder.

    Terrazzo

    Dining room floor, cast in two pours

    Gram Terrazzo

  • Close photograph of corrugated zinc sheet, grey with a soft sheen.

    Zinc

    The eight-metre bar top

    Vesterhav Zink

  • Close photograph of a brushed brass surface in a muted gold tone.

    Brass

    Lamp rods, floor strips and bar rail

    Brøndum Messing

  • Close photograph of a warm beige plastered wall with a soft hand-finished texture.

    Lime plaster

    Walls in the dining room

    Skovlunde Kalk

Credits

Architect and interiors
Fold
Services
Rørlund Teknik
Lighting
Lysmager Studio
Metalwork
Vejle Pladeværk
Builder
Havnefront Entreprise
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