At the entrance to Filandón restaurant in Madrid, Spain, a glass greenhouse has an unexpected purpose. It isn’t where the restaurant grows its vegetables. It’s where diners can buy some of the produce used in its dishes. Designed by Trenchs Studio, the building brings the origins of the restaurant’s food into view, using architecture and custom displays to make the ingredients part of the visitor experience.
Bringing the Restaurant’s Farm Produce to Madrid
The vegetables and greens come from Granja de los Monjes, the restaurant’s own estate in El Bierzo. Although the farm is elsewhere in Spain, the greenhouse gives customers a place to encounter its harvest at the restaurant itself. The shop also carries preserves and artisanal products from Pescaderías Coruñesas, along with liqueurs from Lhardy.
Fresh produce is displayed in baskets and bowls, including on custom-made circular pedestals of natural bronze near the entrance. Those pedestals can be moved and rearranged, allowing the presentation to change with the products on offer. The result is a shop organized around the food itself, with the exterior displays introducing its purpose before anyone steps inside.
A Classic Greenhouse Shape With Adjustable Shade
Trenchs Studio drew on traditional European greenhouses for the building’s aluminum structure, pitched glass roof, and fine framing. The familiar shape gives the small shop its identity, while the glass walls allow views through to the displays and the trees beyond.
An important detail is the system of olive-green wooden blinds across the roof. Based on traditional alicantina-style blinds, these can regulate the amount of sunlight entering the space throughout the day and across the seasons. They give the glass structure a practical way to manage incoming light as part of its design for year-round use.
An Interior Arranged Around the Products
Inside, a large table made from wood and natural stone serves as both a display surface and a service counter. Its central position helps organize how customers move through the shop, separating the areas for browsing from the displays without requiring interior walls. The dark herringbone-patterned wood floor adds warmth beneath the glass roof.
At the back, an oak unit in a warm tobacco tone provides storage and display space for preserves and packaged goods. Focused, warm lighting picks out the products and softens the atmosphere of the glass-and-metal enclosure. These fixed fittings provide a backdrop to the flexible produce displays, so the shop can accommodate different kinds of goods without losing its simple arrangement.
The greenhouse makes an idea that could remain hidden in the kitchen easy to understand: some of the ingredients on Filandón’s menu come from its own farm, and visitors can take those ingredients home. Its design makes that connection visible from the restaurant entrance and practical once customers step through the door.