LOS ANGELES – For its first restaurant in the U.S., Meizhou Dongpo Chinese Restaurant worked with LED Source’s Gavin Cooper and Lee Braddock on a design that turns ceilings and walls into expressive canvases of color. The design scheme also incorporates 475 lit vases set in glass-lined cubby holes along interior walls.
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LED lighting is turning ceilings and walls into expressive canvases of color, as LED Source, the leading North American LED lighting solutions provider, proved in Century City for Meizhou Dongpo’s first restaurant in the United States.
The restaurant opened in December, grabbing diners and decorators by their palettes with flavorful food and colorful décor provided by LED Source’s Los Angeles partner Rob Thompson.
“They were looking for somebody in the States; it was their first location and they wanted to do something quite different, it being their flagship store,” Thompson says.
Meizhou Dongpo officials had seen photos of Miami Tower, another LED Source project, but in Miami, Fla., and called him in March 2013, nine months before the restaurant opened in the Westfield Shopping Mall.
“They had an idea of what they wanted. They had something similar in China,” Thompson says, adding they sent him plans and he contacted the architect.
Meizhou Dongpo wanted to light up both interior and exterior walls, but also wanted 475 lit vases set in glass-lined cubby holes along interior walls, and to be able to control the colors for each cubby. From that, Thompson said it was a matter of figuring out which LED Source lighting products would work best.
“I’ve got a team of pros who’ve seen a lot of different scenarios,” he says. “It really came down to experience.”
That experience included Gavin Cooper – a world-renown lighting designer who co-founded LED Source in 2005 with lighting industry veteran Marcel Fairbairn – and LED Source’s Applications Engineer Lee Braddock, both of whom came from the company’s home office in Wellington, Fla., to help design and build the lighting system.
Not only does LED Source’s “Red, Green, Blue” lighting system set Meizhou Dongpo apart from its neighboring establishments, it reduces energy and operating costs while providing better light quality and a comfortable atmosphere for franchisees and customers alike.
