First established in 1998, the Chubby Girl’s Noodle Shop in Beijing worked with Office AIO to recreate an authentic experience of street dining back in its home city, Chongqing.

Drawing inspirations from various artists' works, the design manifests the city’s physical and cultural traits - its undulating landscape and recent rapid urbanisation - with layering and consistency, simulating the dynamism of casual noodle dining spread across the city hill steps. Its re-interpretation and overhaul stays true to the owners’ and the food’s origin, reopening the shop with an elevation that offers a cultural and spatial experience beyond the taste of noodles

Chongqing noodles are a quintessential part of the city’s local daily culture. Chubby Girl’s Noodle Shop was first established in Chongqing in 1998 providing for this much embedded street food. With this authentic recipe, family members moved to Beijng and founded Chubby Girl’s Noodle Shop in the heart of the capital in 2015, and became the one and only “go-to” noodle shop that offers a taste of southwest China.

The Client came to Office AIO with an ambition to overhaul the shop’s image from one that just happen to sell delicious noodles, to a totality with an interior atmosphere that could only be found appropriate enjoying Chongqing noodles in.

Office AIO drew inspirations from works of photographers Tim Franco, Nadav Kander, and Mark Horn. It documents people’s daily life with the multilayered verticality of the city’s urbanisation and natural landscape as the background.

Exploring ideas surrounding the cities’ physical and cultural characteristics - from Chongqing’s unique landscape and climate, to the contrasting “concrete jungle” appearance, to the cities’ inhabitant’s ability to adapt to rapid urbanisation, as well as the more recent development of becoming one of China’s most vibrant incubator of street art and music scene.

The design is a result of a thorough study, distillation, and re-interpretation of ideas representing Chongqing, presented in a way the owners of Chubby Girl’s Noodle Shop finds to be an imminent extension to their noodle shop experience.