ABSTRACT

This chapter tells the story of the design and the (short-lived) existence of the Puck and Pip restaurant in The Hague, The Netherlands, from the perspective of the designers. It discusses the restaurant as a place where people are cast together for a common pleasure in public but also the frisson of both being in public and the apparent contradiction with the feeling intimacy and privacy. As the author writes, the demands of the users were met through ‘representation, folly and fantasy (and a bit of good lighting)’. The restaurant, here, is presented as a place for pleasure: its pursuit, like that of happiness, is a serious matter.