Thatched Hut Meets Basalt: &Daughters Builds Jeju in Vancouver

Canadian studio &Daughters has completed Jeju, a 44-seat Korean restaurant in Vancouver built from basalt, cork, concrete, thatch and wood. At its centre sits a reinterpretation of a chogajip, a traditional thatched house from Jeju Island, South Korea, constructed from lumber and hand-thatched grass.

The design brief started somewhere unusual: the menu. Chef Dylan Kim develops the restaurant's modern dishes, while his mother, chef Myungseok "Julie" Suh, creates the traditional ones. Some dishes they developed together. &Daughters principal Emma Sims told Dezeen: "The restaurant exists in the space where these two narratives meet."

"We began to think of tradition and reinterpretation as the foundation for the design, translating this relationship into a physical space through a specific set of people, places, materials and traditions," Sims said.

What does the interior actually look like?

From outside, Jeju reads contemporary: a steel-mesh facade. Inside, the studio flipped the register, juxtaposing wood and concrete for a warmer, more tactile feel.

The material list is short and deliberate:

• Basalt for the bar, chef's table and host stand
• Cork cladding for softness and acoustic dampening (sound absorption)
• Polished existing concrete floor, kept but refined to reveal colour variations
• Lumber, thatch and raw concrete masonry units throughout

"The palette is quite simple – basalt, cork, raw concrete masonry units, polished concrete, wood and thatch," Sims said.

The basalt isn't arbitrary. "Basalt is one of the most recognisable materials of Jeju Island," she continued. "Formed through volcanic activity, it is found throughout the island's landscape, architecture and traditional stone walls. Beyond that, we were interested in materials that felt direct and unrefined, allowing them to retain their natural character."

How does a gate become part of service?

The studio layered in a second traditional element: a jeongnang, a three-pole gate from Jeju Island. Sims explained its original function. "Historically used as a means of communicating whether a household was home, away or nearby, it offered an alternative to a conventional locked entrance, rooted in trust and shared understanding," she said.

&Daughters turned that signal into daily ritual. Staff lower two poles in the glazing beside the entrance each day to show the restaurant is open, then raise them at close.

"In this way, a traditional architectural element becomes an active part of the restaurant's daily life," Sims said. She added that the studio wanted to "introduce elements of tradition, ritual and memory into the interior."

Why this matters

Jeju shows how a hospitality project can carry cultural reference without turning it into set design. The materials do the interpretive work — volcanic stone, hand-thatch, cork — while rituals like the jeongnang poles keep tradition functional rather than decorative. For &Daughters, whose name signals a generational lens, the mother-son kitchen behind the menu gives that approach a literal anchor: the space is built where two generations of cooking already meet.