For One Burger's first restaurant, we designed a case study for the brand's new global concept: a space built on an empty lot between two existing buildings in the heart of Athens's historic commercial triangle. Surrounded by raw stone party walls on three sides and open to the sky above, the site carried the weight of the city's layered history — the kind of palimpsest visible everywhere in Athens, where new construction sits directly on top of the old.
Our approach was to create a single continuous landscape to surround and anchor the experience, rather than treat the space as a room to be enclosed by walls. The Canyon - a continuous sculptural form finished with a cream-toned cementitious surface - rises and folds like undulating terrain, its smooth, precision-milled texture set deliberately against the rough stone it wraps. New and old sit in direct dialogue, similar to the contrast that defines much of the city.
The palette stays warm and close to the ground: warm-toned concrete flooring, light oak tables and trim, and soft, filtered light throughout. Material choices respond to Athens itself - its climate, its stone, its color - to make the space feel organic and specific to the site rather than imported. Lighting follows the same logic, warm and low, designed to feel domestic rather than commercial.
Banquettes nest directly into the Canyon's topographic layers, their upholstered finishes cushioning the seating. Custom oak tables, their organic forms echoing the Canyon's curves, rest on powder-coated metal bases scattered through the landscape. The kitchen and bathrooms sit inside an enclosed volume at the back of the lot; an ordering station and bar greet guests to the right of the entrance.
Overhead, a perforated canopy filters daylight by day and closes fully against the cold, letting the space run through every season - what began as a proposal for a pop-up grew, over the course of the project, into a fully operational restaurant and all-day café, with a custom sound system carrying the room into late-night programming.
