A restaurant that looks like a half-sunken shipping container, a 36-foot wide underwater window in the dining room and a champagne bar: those are all features of a restaurant proposed for the Norwegian coastal town of Baly.
Sponsors hope the building, designed by the Snohetta design firm that’s worked on museums and other projects around the world, can be built to open in 2018 as a restaurant to be called “Under.”
Snohetta refers to the idea as a “sunken periscope” and designed the underwater exterior walls with coarse surfaces to encourage mussels and other sealife to find a home there. They also propose that outside of serving hours, scientists could use the windows to study fish behavior.
Before you jump to make a reservation, though, keep in mind: So far, all the publicity has been about the design, and no details are available on who will operate the restaurant.
I can’t help but think it looks a great deal like a big rig gone into the drink and what’s happened to the poor driver, not the “drink” he was thinking about at the end of his shift.