Concrete counter curves through ShuckShuck oyster bar in Vancouver

Canadian office Batay-Csorba Architects has created a greyscale interior for the ShuckShuck oyster restaurant in Vancouver complete with a snaking concrete bar.

ShuckShuck's interior is designed to evoke the colour and texture of oyster shells, with rough pre-cast concrete surfaces and textured painted walls.

Interior of an oyster bar designed by Batay-Csorba Architects — Two curving concrete high tables are the only furniture

Batay-Csorba Architects designed the eatery in Vancouver's Chinatown district for owners Larry Lau and Waylon Sharp, who are serving up Pacific oysters with unusual toppings such as maple syrup and bacon bits alongside oyster margarita shots.

The oyster bar was designed to be informal, with the communal high concrete tables undulating through the room like a loop broken in two places.

Pendant lamps and concrete tables in ShuckShuck — The looping shapes form 19 metres of table space

To further echo the look of an oyster, the tops and sides of the bars are polished and smoothed like the inside of an oyster shell, while their undersides are rough and pockmarked.

If laid out end to end, the counters would be 19 metres long.

Grey concrete floors, tables and columns — Concrete floors, columns and furniture define the space

"The fibre-reinforced concrete tables mediate between the interactive qualities of a loose and casual 'bar top' and the intimacy and enveloping relationship of a 'booth' that wraps around you," said Batay-Csorba Architects.

"Depending on where a patron is standing at the table their personal sense of space and level of interaction with others varies."

Batay-Csorba Architects designs Vancouver oyster bar — The counters are smooth on top

The black metal stands that hold up the concrete surfaces have useful hooks for patrons to hang their bags and coats off the floor while they eat.

Apart from the concrete counters, the bar has little other furniture.

Curving concrete counters in Vancouver oyster bar — The undersides are rough like the outside of an oyster

The floors are concrete too, to match the tables and the concrete columns. Industrial elements such as ceiling ducts have been painted white but left visible.

"This rough and loutish aesthetic is further contrasted with slender exposed bulbs delicately floating in a random pattern overhead," said the studio.

ShuckShuck by Batay-Csorba Architects — ShuckShuck serves oysters with unusual toppings

Batay-Csorba Architects is an architecture firm based in Toronto. Another recent hospitality interior from the practice is this coffee bar with no furniture at all.

More architecture created as an ode to the tasty bivalve includes Zaha Hadid's shell-shaped ferry terminal in Italy and an opera pavilion in the UK that's made of oyster shells and champagne corks.

Photography is by SilientSama.