The new Seta Meat Lab, located in the center of Bologna, just a few minutes’ walk from Piazza Maggiore, is the exclusive restaurant that has opened in the wake of the great success of Seta Sushi Lab in Piazza Santo Stefano, guided by Chef Glen Cueto with Maurilio Zaccone and Davide Colomba.

Seta Meat Lab is a sort of new ‘laboratory’ that offers the finest cuts of meat from all over the world, from Japanese Kobe and Wagyu to the English Tomahawk or the Galician Rubia Gallega. The refined taste and the ambience of Seta Meat Lab is the manifesto of a style that aggregates dissimilar elements and combines them in casual ways, to achieve a coherence of aesthetics. Exposed brick walls with spatula-worked golden details coexist in the same space with optical illusion, reptile or concrete texture wallpapers, as well as with sofas and seats covered in leather or velvet.

All these heterogeneous elements are connected by the lighting project developed by Catellani & Smith – in collaboration with Willy Calabrese, interior designer at Lab 3 showroom in Bologna – that has provided the venue with a selection of lamps, able to fit the peculiar style of the Bolognese restaurant.

An enchanting Gold Moon Chandelier composed by irregular, hand-made golden discs and copper curls that hold tiny gems of light, is surrounded by a green frame made of many climbing pothos, which decorate large part of the ceiling between the tables and the refrigerated display case.

The new 56 Petits Bijoux pendant lamp stands out among the suspensions installed in the restaurant: similar to an almost deconstructed sphere, it is made up of a series of untreated brass circles, studded with numerous high-efficiency LEDs provided with peculiar transparent covers and brass clips. Another striking suspension is Sorry Giotto 12, a 120 cm copper ring, hand-painted in blue, whose structure hides small LEDs able to create a suggestive diffused lighting effect. Lederam W fixtures in a diameter of 25 cm provide lighting as wall lamps. They are made of a disc covered in gold-colored leaf, which hides an LED module, and of a swiveling disc in white or black finish, which, depending on its position, is able to produce enchanting lighting effects and to create suggestive shadows. A custom-made Lederam composition is a special and scenographic piece, made of numerous gold-coloured discs of different diameters. By reflecting their warm and soft lighting on the optical wallpaper of one of the main rooms of the restaurant, the Lederam discs create a nice contrast with the natural light that comes from the ceiling, partially made of concrete- cement glass blocks.

The cocktail bar area, composed of a long industrial counter, is decorated by Jackie O single pendants. Their nickel-plated copper curls holding small removable glass lenses are hung to thin cables, covered in blue fabric, which do not interfere with the essential style and unique design of the pendants.

Some Giulietta BE T wireless table lamps have been placed on the bar counter and in different points of the exclusive restaurant; the lamps have been customized with the name of the restaurant, by a special laser engraving on their base. Giulietta BE T, here in vintage brass finish, can be ‘transported’ easily anywhere, thanks to battery operation and the absence of cables; with a simple touch of the hand it can be switched on and set to three different light intensities.

The lighting project has been completed with three floor lamps that have been positioned in different part of the restaurant: a PostKrisi F 100 with a hand-painted fiberglass diffuser that has been custom painted in RAL 8007 (roe deer brown); a Wa Wa F with brass base and structure, copper rods and glass lenses able to ‘paint’ fascinating circles of light on the wall; finally, a Light Stick F, which is an emblem of the purest minimalism, being a lamp just made of a thin, satin-gold finished metal rod.

The lighting project carried out for Seta Meat Lab confirms Catellani & Smith commitment to implement, in addition to its standard production, the production of ‘tailor-made’ lamps and ‘out of series’ pieces, specially designed for contract, hotellerie and residential projects in Italy and abroad.


Interior Designer: Willy Calabrese

Photo by Nava Rapacchietta