Shifting tides: the designers of this New York restaurant sought acoustic softness and spatial intimacy.

Fit-out is a curious architectural medium. Often temporary, materially thin, and stylistically over-egged, it is the more muted and restrained interiors that usually attract recognition. It came as somewhat of a surprise, therefore, that this year's jury decided to give this small project, Tides Restaurant, an honourable mention.

Little was known about the restaurant's genre; even less was revealed about the spatial layout. Quite simply, it was the sheer ambition of the ceiling that intrigued the Jury.

In commercial fit-outs, ceilings often suffer great disservice as the forgotten elevation. Services coordination is easily overlooked, and materials rarely deviate from dry lining. Smoke detectors, light-fittings and sprinklers compete in misaligned unresolved grids, despite the fact that when seen through brightly-lit shop windows, free of merchandise, people and clutter, the ceiling is, often the most prominent surface. Here then, the designers invested a great deal of time in the consideration of the ceiling, providing an inverted acoustic topography that helps mediate what they considered to be an inappropriately proportioned space for a small intimate restaurant. With over 120 000 bamboo skewers (cut into three standard lengths), perhaps the only reservation was that this idea could have been taken even further. R.G.