Upside-down plant pots, bare lightbulbs, exposed ducting and raw materials feature in this São Paulo restaurant by Suite Arquitetos (+ slideshow).

Brazilian studio Suite Arquitetos refurbished a two-storey building in the south of Brazil's largest city Brazilian capital into a healthy-eating restaurant called Bien!

The architects used a combination of wood, metal, yellow and blue furniture and greenery and intended to create an open-plan dining environment with a raw industrial twist.

Windows wrap around the corner of the ground-floor restaurant facades, allowing the interior materials and fixtures to be seen from the outside. Filipe Troncon of Suite Arquitetos told Dezeen: "We demolished everything, creating a big glass facade to make more natural lighting and communicate with the pedestrians."

Pine-topped tables, designed by the architects, feature yellow steel legs and look like study desks. Blue chairs and cushions were chosen to add an additional colour to the restaurant and provoke a "sustainable and healthy sensation".

The walls and pillars are covered with wood panelling and the bar area is lined with steel sheets that compliment exposed air-conditioning ducts overhead.

White plant pots and greenery dangle above the tables, interspersed with exposed bulbs and angled yellow lamps.

A large metal box formed by perforated metal plates houses the first floor and contains a kitchen, storage areas, office and bathrooms.

"The first floor exterior material is a laser perforated metallic plate, that the pedestrians can not see inside, but the cooks and the manager can see out," Troncon told Dezeen.

Other restaurants we've featured recently include a fantasy bar and restaurant that appears to be stitched together with thick black thread, an Italian restaurant in Shanghai with a raw industrial interior and a 1920s style renovation of a Basel bar and brasserie.

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Photography is by Ricardo Bassetti.

Here's more from the architects:

Bien! restaurant

The architecture of Bien! Restaurant is oriented toward the street and toward the City of São Paulo.

The small two floor building occupies a discrete corner in the middle of itaim, in the capital's South Zone, and was refurbished to receive a natural food restaurant, opened only during the day, in which the light enhances the colours and emphasises the movements.

The joining of these two factors, light and city, defined for the space and almost industrial, but comfortable, design and contemporary concern for the environment.

Young architects Carolina Mauro, Daniela Frugiuele and Filipe Troncon, from Suite arquitetos, had, as a starting point, the expansion of the possible limit.

In the ground floor a transparent glass box surrounds the area of the dinning-room and gives it continuity while revealing to passerby the raw materialness of the tables, chairs and coatings.

One floor up, a detached metal box, formed by perforated metal plates protects the kitchen's volume, closets, bathrooms and office, and allow the light and air in without revealing the traditional framework of doors and windows.