Shoreline seafood restaurants are typically great places to enjoy an evening, but if you want to get truly up-close-and-personal with the watery depths while you devour the creatures that reside their, your options are pretty limited. Now, a new high-end restaurant is being built in Norway that will let you do just that, and its dining area is completely under water.
It’s called, fittingly, “Under,” and it’s being built on the coast of Norway — or, to be more specific, it will become part of the coastline itself. Designed by architecture firm Snøhetta, the structure will be built on a rocky shore and dip down into the sea, where customers will be able to watch fish swim as they eat their brethren.
Under, which is being built to accommodate as many as 100 guests, features an angular design that makes it appear as if the building simply suck halfway into the water, and that’s the whole point. Guests come in through a shoreline entrance before finding their way down to the actual dining area, which is some 16 feet below the surface.
A massive panoramic window made of acrylic will span over 35 feet wide and over 13 feet tall, dominating one wall of the main dining room. To ensure the water stays out and guests don’t drown in anything but pricey booze, the window will be over three feet thick. On the seabed outside the window, lighting will be installed to ensure guests get a good view of whatever happens to swim by.
Since the entire point of the restaurant is to allow customers to enjoy the flora and fauna of the sea, construction will be done with the ecology of the area in mind. When the restaurant isn’t entertaining guests, it will be used for biology research and host scientists hoping to study the creatures and conditions under the waves. “The researchers will also help create optimize conditions on the seabed so that fish and shellfish can thrive in proximity to the restaurant,” Snøhetta explains.
