Sella Concept: Night Tales

- written by Laura

It’s an inevitable part of every night out, the point where everyone gets ravenous and the hunt for the nearest, tastiest belly-filler is on. Or simultaneously that moment around last orders where you really want to dance, and spend hours trawling the streets for somewhere to pull some shapes. 

Since 2013 the clever folks at Night Tales have anticipated these awkward late night quests, and created pop-up hotspots where you can eat, drink and dance. Its new venture – a permanent home under the arches in Hackney’s Bohemia Place – is a veritable palace of fun, featuring a 300-capacity nightclub, a mezcal cocktail bar, the Asahi Super Dry Bar, an izakaya-style Japanese grill restaurant called Fat Baby and pizza parlour Sons of Slice.

Tasked with the mean feat of bringing all these diverse pleasure zones under one coherent aesthetic umbrella is Sella Concept, the London-based studio of designers Tatjana von Stein and Gayle Noonan. Having worked closely with the Night Tales team last year on its pop-up rooftop terrace bar in Netil House in London Fields, the duo were asked to connect the disparate parts of the new Night Tales permanent venue while addressing the structural constraints imposed by its railway arches. ‘The key was to create a scheme to link all the areas through colour, materials and behaviour,’ says Tatjana. ‘We wanted to stay away from the usual East London bar aesthetic of industrial/foraged chic and the traditional Japanese theme, so we pushed the perimeters of both.’

Transforming the former auto garage into a network of interconnected spaces, Sella Concept opted for a distinctive 1990s aesthetic for the Asahi bar and Fat Baby, the Japanese grill helmed by ex-Umu and Pitt Cue co chef Gregory Rounds. The Agave bar and dance floor each feature pink and peach tones, with booths formed from peach-coloured resin and powder-coated metals, pigmented concrete and rose materials contrasted with concrete and reflective metals. In a nod to the space’s Japanese food and drink, Sella Concept has also introduced cherry timber and burnt-wood detailing to the interior.

The curved ceilings of this under-arch space could have posed issues, but Tatjana and Gayle decided to made them a key feature, conceiving a space full of round edges and circular details – such as a dramatic circular entrance. Leading off from this is a 4,000sq ft sun-trap garden, complete with day beds, private booths, plus a 9m cocktail bar backed by a tumbling waterfall. The perfect spot to see out the last of London’s glorious weather. 

Click here to hear tales of Sella Concepts’ other equally gorgeous projects.

To find out more about what Zetteler does for this creative pair, take a look at their client page here.