Space Copenhagen: Kinyōbi’s Japanese Restaurant in Copenhagen

Space Copenhagen sets the scene for Kinyōbi, chef Will King Smith’s new Japanese restaurant in Copenhagen, where walnut, bamboo, paper and stone compose an alluring study in nocturnal restraint.

There is something distinctly after-dark about Kinyōbi.

The new Japanese restaurant from chef Will King Smith, tucked into Copenhagen’s Antonigade district, does not announce itself through spectacle. Instead, it seduces slowly: walnut darkened by shadow, bamboo filtering the light, leather and heavy linen softening the room, and the low pulse of vinyl somewhere beyond the bar.

Designed by Space Copenhagen, the studio founded by Signe Bindslev Henriksen and Peter Bundgaard Rützou, the 262 sq m restaurant takes its cues from Tokyo – though not in the obvious sense.

There are no theatrical gestures towards Japan. Rather, the designers have distilled the qualities of the city’s contemporary dining culture: intimacy, precision, material richness and the particular pleasure of discovering a place gradually.

Kinyōbi is less a dining room than a sequence.

Guests arrive first in the bar and lounge, an enveloping space wrapped in warm walnut and grounded by built-in seating upholstered in weighty linen and leather. Space Copenhagen’s walnut Ren chairs for Stellar Works sit alongside vintage Asian consoles and sculptural objects, their aged surfaces providing a counterpoint to the clarity of the contemporary architecture.

The existing stone columns are left to assert their own weight. Against the warmth of the timber, they feel almost archaeological.

This interplay – polished and patinated, precise and imperfect – runs throughout the restaurant.

At the bar, a wall of walnut has been conceived as an enormous Japanese cabinet. Sliding lamella doors partially conceal the bottles behind, allowing glimpses of softly illuminated glass to appear between the timber.

It is an elegant exercise in withholding.

Nearby, a DJ station extends from the bar, accompanied by shelves of vinyl. Music is not treated as decoration or entertainment added after the fact; it is folded into the architecture and the rhythm of the evening.

Timber screens continue the choreography. Their slender vertical lamellae frame the lounge and filter views into the spaces beyond, creating thresholds without closing rooms off completely.

Above, Paavo Tynell pendant lights for GUBI, crafted in hand-stitched bamboo, float through the darkness. Their diffused illumination gives faces, surfaces and objects a flattering softness.

Then the restaurant changes tempo.

Beyond the lounge, the plan opens around a central kitchen, placing cooking at the heart of the room. A counter wraps around the chefs, borrowing something of the intimacy of Japanese counter dining while remaining at a familiar dining height.

Hovering above is a suspended structure of paper and walnut – part lantern, part architecture. Its diffuse glow illuminates the choreography below: hands, knives, plates, steam.

The kitchen is theatre, but quietly so.

Along the façade, bespoke sofas are screened from the street by bamboo curtains. Daylight enters in fragments, while views towards Copenhagen are softened just enough to make the room feel removed from the city without becoming disconnected from it.

That tension is perhaps Kinyōbi’s most compelling quality.

It belongs neither entirely to Tokyo nor entirely to Copenhagen.

Its Japanese references appear through material and ritual rather than motif: screens, filtered light, crafted timber, paper, concealment and proximity. Copenhagen enters through restraint, proportion and an instinct for materials allowed to speak for themselves.

The palette is almost elemental: wood, stone, paper, bamboo, leather and textile. There is little here that feels superfluous.

More importantly, these are materials intended to acquire character. Leather will soften. Timber will deepen. Stone will bear traces of use. Kinyōbi has been designed not only for opening night, but for the evenings that follow.

“With Kinyōbi, we were interested in creating a sequence of moods – spaces that feel calm, fun and alive at the same time,” says Bindslev Henriksen. “There is clarity in the architecture, but also a softness in how the materials meet, how the light is layered and how people move through it.”

For Rützou, that sense of discovery was embedded in the project from its earliest stages.

“From the beginning, we wanted Kinyōbi to feel less like a conventional restaurant and more like a place discovered gradually over the course of an evening,” he says.

The result is a restaurant that understands the seduction of not revealing everything at once.

One enters through shadow and walnut, catches glimpses through screens, follows the music and eventually arrives at the glow of the kitchen. The architecture does not demand attention. It sets a rhythm.

And somewhere between Copenhagen restraint and Tokyo after dark, Kinyōbi finds its own frequency.

For more, visit Space Copenhagen.