Streamlight: Vibia Brightens Valencia’s Vaqueta Gastro Mercat

Situated in Valencia’s Central Market, part of the historic city center, is VaquetaGastro Mercat. A combination green-grocer and restaurant, the innovative space was designed by Janfri & Rachal. The restaurant, tucked into the rear of the grocery store like a secret speakeasy, is a bold merging of materials and styles.

Here, bamboo ceilings and colourful mosaic tiles co-mingle seamlessly with Carrara marble and gleaming gold accents.

A few small rooms throughout the eatery offer intimacy within the sprawling space.
One features Antoni Arola’s Flamingo lamp, with a deconstructed design that recalls its namesake hovering like a bird overhead. The fixture’s luminous presence adds a delicate counterpoint to the room’s weathered stone and wooden beams, casting diffuse gradations of LED-powered light

In the restaurant’s main room, the designers deployed the Palma pendant, also by Antoni Arola. Inspired by ancient hanging gardens, Arola created the pendant with the idea of connecting light and vegetation as in the natural world. Two glowing semicircles of blown glass joined by an aluminum belt accommodate vegetation, adding an organic, untamed touch to Vaqueta.

Clustered above individual tables bordered by curving bamboo, the vertical version lends
the look of a natural enclosure, while spanning the length of one side the horizontal Palma helps elongate and accentuate the area.

Contact: Streamlight.