Type: Restaurant
Location: Quito, Ecuador
Area: 300 sqm
Date: 2022
Status: Built
Client: Rodrigo Pacheco
Foresta is a conservation-focused restaurant from Rodrigo Pacheco. Estudio Felipe Escudero led on the interior architecture for the 300 sqm space. The design of the space uses a contrast in colors and light - cream-colored adobe walls that form the backdrop for dark, lava stone cooking surfaces that look almost like floating stones - within a space that has vaulted, glass ceilings to increase natural light and an interior that is adorned with plants to increase the indoor/outdoor feel. It is a space designed to feel both deeply grounded in the materials of the earth, but employing technology to create a gentle, futuristic, and otherworldly aesthetic - signaling a future for the planet more in harmony with nature.
Black volcanic stone is carved in sculptural and functional ways to provide space for cooks to prepare food in different ways (steam, grill cooking, etc) combined with high tech machinery which is camouflage underneath the black islands. The objective of the project is to express and show the processes of culinary production in this way the architectural proposal creates an open space to bring together chefs and diners as a community.
Escudero's design takes inspiration from the menu of Fortesta. Pacheco is renown for his holistic approach to food, using fresh ingredients grown in the chef's rewilded forests and sourced from local Indigenous communities. The menu at Foresta is hyper-seasonal and sustainable menu that blends elements from the coast, sierra, and Amazon, paying homage to Ecuador's prized biodiversity and ancestral traditions. Foresta recovers cooking techniques and forms of consuming food from local communities and applies them to a contemporary context using sustainable materials, local craftsmanship and recycling of products.