Romantic designer up in the air

By Chu Meng

China World Trade Center Tower 3, Beijing’s tallest business center, opened last week. The four restaurants and bars on the 80th floor are the city’s highest dining places, and their interior designs are the result of the vision of one man: artistic director Adam Tihany.

Tihany is a preeminent designer whose work includes many Michelin-starred restaurants. Born in the Romanian region of Transylvania in 1948 and raised in Israel, he earned an architectural degree from Milan, Italy. After apprenticing in design firms throughout Europe, he moved to New York City when he was 28 to become design director of the firm Unigram.

“Think of me not as a designer, but as a custom tailor or as a cultural portrait artist,” he said. “When I accept a new case, the first thing I do is have an in-depth look at the city the restaurant is located in and live in small and creative hotels, thick with authentic local traditional cultural elements.”

Tihany designed the interiors of Grill 79, The Lounge, Atmosphere, Chairman’s Room and The Peak, which are all on the top of Tower 3, using features that subtly recall traditional Chinese symbolism and the duality of “yin” and “yang.”

To Tihany, yin and yang convey the concept of heaven and earth, balance and harmony, prevalent in Chinese culture such as traditional Chinese medicine, taijiquan and qigong. “Yin-yang was also one of the most important concerns when ancient Chinese people built their homes,” he said, adding, “My gray mustache combines black and white, which also abide by yin-yang theory.”

The 80th floor’s decor is yin —cool, ethereal, heavenly and feminine. Tihany is particularly masterful when playing up the prominence of ceiling features to reflect a heavenly ambience. In The Lounge, he uses custom glass light spheres that appear suspended in mid-air, a virtual sky inside the hotel. 

The 79th floor is characteristically yang — warmer, with earthy colors that evoke masculinity. Rows of dangling crystals surround a sleek glass-enclosed lift that carries guests between the top floors. 

“Every day I pray to be like design heavyweights like Philippe Stark or Zaha Hadid,” Tihany said. “If there is one style that you do well and you can do it everywhere, that is wonderful. But in order for us to get the best results for our clients, we have to do something different every time.

“The easiest way is to be site specific and do things that cannot be done in London or New York or Paris or anywhere else — to fuse unique local cultural background into the design. We are not Gucci. We are more like Brioni.”

Tihany also designed the “tallest restaurant in the world” on the 123rd floor of the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world. However, he said that is not comparable with his work in Beijing.

“Well, that restaurant is 40 floors higher,” he said. “But it is weird shooting up 125 floors in 36 seconds and what do you see? Nothing. There is no view. It’s all desert. At night it is completely dark. I suppose if you are drunk enough, you can see everything. You will be seeing spaceships. But in Beijing, you can see Chang’an Avenue and even the Forbidden City.”