Ghost, Kyiv – Ukraine

The restaurant is located in central Kyiv in the Olympic National Sports Complex, which is one of the biggest sports stadiums in Europe. The exceptional location made the venue a part of the biggest story and influenced its design concept. The restaurant interior is imbued with postmodern eclecticism and inhabited by images that shape the history of several generations.The solid and confident aesthetics of a general’s cabinet has been taken as a basis for the interior with the help of the veneer on the walls and the restrained colors range.Only natural materials were used, such as wood, stone, glass, leather and brass.A waive-shaped mosaic wall leads from the bathrooms lengthwise to the open kitchen.A gallery of iconic characters has been collected there: rocket engineer Sergey Korolev, legendary soccer coach Valeriy Lobanovskyi, innovator Steve Jobs, founders of Kyiv, singer Freddie Mercury, The Beatles musicians, and some others. It could seem like a random mishmash, but it is not. All those images and characters create our cultural DNA and shape our worldview. They come from our past and ambitions and weave the general context that lets us exist, think and construct in the mutual paradigm. The mosaic was made in the traditional soviet murals technique.The round glass wine cupboard makes an axis with the big bar island, which has a mosaic-decorated façade. Barstools and pendants also resemble the soviet artistic tradition, as their shapes were made under the supremacist influence.GOST contains a big hall with a few seating variations, a VIP room, a kids’ room, and a summer area outside. The most significant element of the open kitchen is the wood pizza oven.Outside the restaurant next to its entrance is an abstract sculpture made of aluminum with metal rivets. It was inspired by the Motherland Monument, the giant sculpture which had been built in the Kyiv hills in the80th. Also, it is a tribute to Soviet monumentalism.