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Aster, Shanghai: RooMoo Design Studio Builds a Restaurant Around the Geometry of a Flower
- Style Essentials Edit Team
- Apr 11
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 14
Fact File
Project Name: Aster
Location: No. 208, 150, Yongyuan Road, Jing'an District, Shanghai
Project Date: 2025
Interior Design: RooMoo Design Studio
Lead Designers: Tao Zhang, Ray Zhang, Marine Bois
Design Team: Gino Wang
Construction: Shanghai Suji Decoration Engineering Co., Ltd.
Lighting Consultant: Shanghai Baizi Lighting Engineering Design Co., Ltd.
Manufacturer: Hafele
Furniture: Shanghai YiZhu Decorating Engineering Co., Ltd.
Client: Shanghai Rise Pie Catering Co., Ltd.
Photography: Wen Studio
Award: Winner, Interior Design Restaurant — Fine Dining
Aster is a fine dining restaurant in Shanghai's Jing'an District designed by RooMoo Design Studio for chef Joshua Paris, whose nineteen-year culinary career has taken him through New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Australia, and China, including formative years at UV with Paul Pairet and alongside Richard Ekkebus at 58° Grill in Mandarin Oriental Shanghai. The restaurant takes its name from the aster flower, whose Latin root also means "star," and the design takes that double reference—botanical and celestial—as its organizing principle from the plan outward to the ceiling and through to the private dining spaces at the upper level.
Paris's culinary philosophy is built around a single discipline: always ask why, and refine every element until it cannot be improved further. That same uncompromising approach is visible in how RooMoo has approached the design. Nothing in the space reads as arbitrary. Every material choice, every lighting decision, and every spatial transition connects back to the same botanical and astronomical framework that gives the restaurant its name and its identity.
The spatial logic is drawn directly from the flower's natural structure: a central disc surrounded by radiating petals, repeated and layered outward. At Aster, this structure becomes a three-part concentric plan that organizes the entire ground floor. The circular cocktail bar occupies the center of the room. Around it, a wraparound dining ring faces the open kitchen, placing guests within direct sight and arm's reach of preparation, plating, and service. The outermost ring is circulation, enabling a continuous 360-degree service radius and keeping the floor plan in constant movement without ever disrupting the dining experience. The front and back of the house operate as a single visible stage rather than as separate domains, and the seating arrangement means that the culinary process is part of the guest experience from the moment they sit down rather than something that happens out of sight.
The bar itself, visible in the images as a long curved form with white upholstered stools running along its outer face, is finished at hand level in a hand-modelled clay surface that RooMoo describes as evoking stratified rock. The texture is evident in the photographs: rough, irregular, and tactile against the warm timber of the bar top and the herringbone oak floor that radiates outward from the bar's base like roots extending through soil. A soft halo of light runs along the bar's perimeter at floor level, creating a luminous ring that reinforces the concentric geometry of the plan and connects visually to the overhead installation above. The bar functions simultaneously as the room's social hub and its production deck, and the design makes no attempt to separate these two roles. The openness is the point.
The dominant visual element of the space is the ceiling installation suspended above the bar across the double-height volume. Thirty-nine modular brass frames spiral gently outward from a central point, each holding a single translucent violet petal made from recycled xuan paper. The scale of the installation is considerable: in the wide-angle photographs it fills the full height of the double-volume above the bar, its outer frames extending toward the glazed facade and the exposed concrete structure of the building beyond. Viewed from across the room, it reads as a single large violet nebula suspended in the air, its petals overlapping and shifting as light catches their edges and moves through the translucent material. Viewed from directly beneath, as the close-up images reveal, the individual brass frames and the delicate fiber texture of the xuan paper become legible, and the construction logic behind the effect becomes clear. The material quality of the petals is visible at this scale: semi-translucent, with the natural fibers of the paper showing through, subtle tonal variation across each panel, and the edges illuminated by carefully directed light that traces their form without flattening it. At the center of the installation, a circular floral motif concentrated in the brass framework places the botanical reference at the highest and most central point of the composition, making the aster form readable even from below. The system is designed for longevity and sustainability: petals can be re-dyed as they age, and frames can be reused, making the installation adaptable over time without requiring full replacement.
The floor throughout the main dining area is herringbone oak, transitioning to stone within the bar zone, and every edge where a surface meets the body—bar counter, seating, table—has been rounded and softened in timber or stone so that the physical contact with the space is consistently comfortable. The herringbone pattern of the floor radiates outward from the bar in a way that reads as an extension of the floral geometry into the ground plane, connecting the ceiling installation and the floor surface through the same organizational logic. The exposed concrete ceiling of the building is left visible above and around the installation, its raw industrial quality providing a deliberate counterpoint to the warmth and craft of the interior below and allowing the violet and brass of the ceiling piece to read with clarity against the neutral grey of the structure.
Along the window line, layered pendant lights continue the floral motif, each aligned with structural beams and varying subtly in height and form. Their decorative glow sits above the dining tables, while precise downlights below ensure that each table is properly illuminated for the food and the service without relying on the ambient warmth of the decorative layer.
A side corridor rises past the open kitchen to the mezzanine VIP lounge, which is finished in walnut and velvet and where the room's geometry shifts subtly off-axis, creating a more contained and private atmosphere distinct from the openness of the ground floor. A mirrored antique bronze canopy expands the perception of the lower ceiling height, etched with abstract floral motifs that are positioned to align precisely with the lighting, creating what RooMoo describes as a quiet, elevated sky within the mezzanine volume. The linear art-glass windows of this level are referenced in the soft halo of light at the bar below, connecting the two levels through the same lighting language.
In the private dining room at the upper level, a stardust installation suspends smoky violet petals in loose constellations above the dining table. Set against a dark textile backdrop that draws the eye to the food and the conversation rather than the architecture, the space completes the celestial half of the restaurant's name. Stone and timber give way here entirely to velvet and woven fabric so that every surface the body comes into contact with is soft, warm, and quiet. The transition from the open stage of the ground floor to the intimacy of the private dining room is the full range of the restaurant's spatial offer: public and performative at one end, enclosed and concentrated at the other.
Aster opened in 2025 and was awarded Winner in Interior Design Restaurant—Fine Dining.
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