Alain Ducasse at Morpheus by Jouin Manku: 2018 Best of Year Winner for Hotel Dining

Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse’s latest culinary endeavor is a French/Asian-inflected fantasia inside a Zaha Hadid Architects–designed hotel in Macau. At Alain Ducasse at Morpheus, the décor is as sparkling and piquant as a glass of Moët: Blown-glass tubes cascade from the silvery ceiling to divvy the 7,000 square feet into discrete zones. LED-lit from inside to impart a flattering, ambient glow, the icicles seem to drip into reflecting pools that wend around the dining room’s periphery. The custom lighting elements “glisten like water, creating a shimmering forest that blurs our understanding of the space,” says Interior Design Hall of Fame member Patrick Jouin, who oversaw the project with co-partner Sanjit Manku. It’s an exceedingly rarefied way to carve the eatery into sanctums that feel indulgently sheltering but not too compartmentalized.

The restaurant layout is equally fluid, unfurling in a curvilinear path around mirror-clad structural columns that hide in plain sight. The floor plan of the main dining area reads as a series of overlapping circles, a trio of them at the edge forming semiprivate suites. Each suite centers on an illuminated crystalline table programmed to dim at the end of the meal, at which time a glass screen slides open and reveals a secret salon to which guests can retire for a round or two of bubbly.

Project Team: Marion Guerry; Aude-Marine Beuzelin; Tania Cohen; Julien Lizé; Bruno Pimpanini; François Isone; Audrey Krukoff; Céline Allard; Filippo Canni.

> See more Best of Year Project Winners from the December 2018 issue of Interior Design