African Design Magazine May 2016 | Page 16

African project Live Bait Restaurant L ive Bait is about colourful, casual, comfortable dining in a harbour venue that is unique in South Africa. On sunny days, the floor to ceiling windows are opened to allow the heady scent of the sea to whet visitor’s appetites. Popular with young couples, families and foreign dignitaries alike, the casual banquette seating and colourful harbour atmosphere make Live Bait the perfect place to enjoy a lazy lunch by the sea. Recently refurbished, Cemcrete were instrumental in attaining the look and feel desired by the owners of the restaurant, The Harbour House Group. The floor finish used for Live Bait is Cemcrete’s Colour Hardener, which is the ideal finish to use when laying a new screed as it is a granolithic concrete material that is floated into fresh screeds (applied the same day as the screed application) and colours, strengthens and almost doubles the strength of a standard screed. The Cemcrete Colour Hardener application was done by Maxicoatings who have been working with cementitious products since 1998. “Live Bait presented a new challenge to the Maxicoatings team, as they wanted seamless Grecian style built-in seating featured in the restaurant,” explains Cemcrete’s Nadine Prinsloo. The project allowed the application team to expand their expertise as it was one of the first times they did a granolithic installation on benches with such an alternative radius. A special tool was made to create the radius on the Grecian styled benches, and in addition, the overall idea was to ensure cracking in the screed floors, so the fibre in the floors was removed to increase the possibility of cracking in the floors. “This was a special request that is out of the norm, as most clients don’t actually want cracks to appear in their cement flooring,” says Prinsloo. “From the custom colour choice (a mixture of Stone and White Colour Hardener) to the overall design of the restaurant, 16 africandesignmagazine.com