Our team at GMLD provided the lighting design of Le Fou Fou Dining Hall, a quick turnaround project with Quebec developer Carbonleo, with the leadership of the talented design team of Lemay Michaud and in collaboration with Lambert et Fils.

Le Fou Fou is a European style food hall; a collection of top-tier culinary offerings sharing a large seating area, each with a distinctive character. Featuring 900 seats in 30,000 sf, a rich design palette with the ambiance of a high-end restaurant is key to transcending a shopping centre food hall experience.

Lighting plays a key role in supporting the visual comfort and atmosphere of the space and the distinction of different restaurant personalities. Lighting is integrated into millwork and a family of custom decorative luminaires is featured, locally manufactured and developed in an integrated process with the client, fabricator, and design team.

Architecturally, the space has a large open deck ceiling with exposed ductwork. A key project challenge was to support the individuality of each unique district within the larger volume, and create a rich and warm human scale environment, redirecting attention from building infrastructure above the suspended lighting. Another challenge was the compressed timeline that went from concept to opening in approximately 14 months. This challenge was met by a collaborative design approach, bringing suppliers and manufacturers to the table from early days.

The budget was strategically allocated to prioritize decorative statement lighting – simple but versatile general lighting quietly supports larger illuminated placemaking elements. Tunable lighting matches colour temperature to time of day, with low level warm lighting creating an intimate atmosphere in the evenings, and cooler bright white by day compensating for daylight from large windows along one wall of the space.

Lighting supports a welcoming, comfortable, vibrant dining experience connecting well known chefs with accessible pricing in a central location. The shopping centre and dining hall are the first phase in a carbon neutral, mixed use development that is served by metro, providing a positive impact on the surrounding community.

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