A Cycladic Affair, Palo Alto Dining

A Cycladic Affair

Palo Alto Dining

Over the last year, C’est ici has been pretty much focused on finding talent, new, existing, local, international and everything in between. The beauty about our business is that we act a little bit like interiors scouts. We often highlight their potential in our designs and give them the importance that they deserved.

Well, our Palo Alto project is a carefully curated list of designers complemented by a beautiful collection of art owned by our client. After 12 months of designing this beautiful villa in the midst of Al Sufouh, we are delighted to start showcasing our design journey with you. Our reveals will be exactly as this project, space by space and with the same importance as we gave every corner.

This post is solely dedicated to our Palo Alto Dining – a cycladic affair. But wait- what is a cycladic style?

Visuals by Homework – ARK Journal feature

Influenced by factors such as history, landscape, climate, and environment, the architectural language of the Cyclades is a harmonious mix of white cubic houses, cobblestone streets, pristine windmills, and ubiquitous blue domed churches. Usually found in Greek architects and known to use the art of shapes. Flat roofs, cubic shapes, and dazzling whitewashed walls are dominant features of the local architecture, which glitters in brilliant whites and blues under the glorious Mediterranean sun.

Surprisingly, most of these unique settlements have been developed in an unplanned manner using simple materials. And although art and aesthetics have never been a priority for the islands’ inhabitants, the purpose being solely to cover the people’s needs, the Cycladic style serves as inspiration in designing some of today’s most beautiful spaces.

This was our starting point, we wanted to create a contemporary dining expressed in different shapes and forms. Let’s make a start and tell you the story behind our dining, a reflection of traditional and the contemporary interior design, creating elegance and luxury, but what underlies it is a hint of playfulness—in the selection of colour, in the choice of objects and textures.

The Design

Monochrome or not? Our client is particularly fuzzy about colors, despite their exquisite taste in art, we wanted to remain quite conservative with the color palette when it came to our design. Our strongest links were DARK OAK, soft geometry, unequal forms and shapes and adding the unexpected. Precisely on these grounds, we needed to spend a good amount of time in curating the right pieces. While not a lot of them, each selection had a story to tell.

Inspiration and Key Pieces

As you may know, one of the main things that we focused on our designs is that ''second eye factor''. We are never 100% sure about the outcome of our designs without options, and this is where the real fun begins. Curating options that will look both good and according to the design is quite adventurous. We love second choices and third, the end result is somehow unexpected but thought through. Have a peek at the different options for this space and the inspiration behind.

Selected options

The Top Tun Chair by Faina

A Ukrainian crush! We have been following these designers for a while. Since on our last trip to Milan Design Week in 2019, we always wanted to incorporate these pieces in our designs. Once our client showed interest in this particular designer, we were 100% on board.

‘’TOPTUN is created with the idea of “soft geometry” — a simple shape design, yet with strongly eminent outlines. Perfect angles of chunky legs with a trick of the light on it make TOPTUN the centre of any interior’’

The Collection comes from Yakusha Design, a multidisciplinary live design studio founded by architect and designer Victoria Yakusha in 2006 – Kyiv, Ukraine. They believe in the authentic and honest design, clean and emotional interiors. Inspired by their native land, natural imperfections and traditions of craftsmanship.

Bespoke Dining

We changed our mind quite a bit when it came to the dining table. From oval to semi oval to a kind of soap shape, we finally crafted the perfect shape for this beautiful dining along with Tam Stuff creations. An imperfect tear shape crafted in dark oak along with three cylinder legs.

Inspired by cycladic shapes and unequal edges, the dining table was simply a piece of art. Watch the process from the design to the end result.

C’est ici Finds

De Padova - Elementi

Let's talk about our beautiful DE PADOVA piece which made the final touch for this space. Here is the blend of traditional and contemporary touch creating elegance and luxury, but was underlined by a hint of playfulness.

''Like an imaginary axis, the rod of the DePadova Elementi spears the spheres in length and continues beyond. Elementi’s presence is just the final drop to our design''

The Stairs Sideboard

Our side board table was somehow our locally sourced item. While produced in Serbia, our friends from Soul and Tables had the perfect fit for the the space.

''An angular composition, designed by Alain van Havre, forms the heart of a design that aims to distance itself from traditional static and immobile surfaces. By perfectly aligning multiple angles, a unique sense of volume is created. Under the light, the multi-faceted blackened oak canvas creates even more depth by casting shadows''

The space needed very little accessories, and we tried to focus on giving the right importance to the selected items. Our final touch was this oversize indoor tree sourced from the Garden Center.