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Restaurant Goes Full-On Industrial-Chic With Corrugated Metal Walls

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The look was inspired by an unlikely building type

Corrugated metal—that workaday material largely used in industrial projects—is enjoying its time on center stage: In France, a 1930s house clad in swaths corrugated metal (and warmed up with timber accents) makes the case for the rugged material. In—where else—Australia, a haute cabin in the woods forgoes the standard log for the industrial-chic of, you guessed it, corrugated metal.

But this restaurant, OX, in Helsinki, applies that old, practical material in a new, unexpected way, in the style of wallpaper. Masterminded by local interior architect and designer Joanna Laajisto—of Joanna Laajisto Creative Studio—the faintly mint-green metal complements rust-red tables and countertops (marble) and chairs (upholstered leather).

Though this may sound like a Christmas color palette (the finished product deploys shades of red and green that avoid the cheesiest associations of this color combination) Laajisto was, in fact, inspired by a perhaps unlikely source: old slaughterhouses. She told Dezeen that she attended a dinner party in just such a space, and liked the acoustic properties of the corrugated metal.

Paired with more luxurious accents, like brass sconces and wall shelving, timber floors, marble dining surfaces (of Laajisto's design), and wood-and-leather chairs (Thonet), the corrugated metal, works.

Joanna Laajisto lines Helsinki restaurant walls with corrugated metal [Dezeen]

1930s House in France Makes Corrugated Metal Cladding Chic [Curbed]

Cool Aussie Modern Cabin Ditches Logs for Corrugated Metal [Curbed]