Aqua Kyoto

Aqua Kyoto is the rooftop Japanese restaurant set above Aqua Nueva on Regent Street, London, a destination dining space with panoramic views and a refined aesthetic rooted in Japanese craft and philosophy. The restaurant occupies the fifth floor of the former Dickens & Jones building and has undergone a sophisticated renovation designed by Robert Angell, with furniture and joinery produced by Make Bespoke Studio's manufacturing partners.

The commission included distinctive low-level seating, custom table bases and decorative panelling framing the open kitchen and bar areas. Each piece required close coordination with the interior design team to ensure finishes matched the Japanese-inspired scheme, a palette of dark timbers, lacquer japanning and hand-finished copper-gold metalwork drawn from the philosophy of finding purity from the impure.

Serving the finest contemporary Japanese cuisine, Aqua Kyoto is one of London’s most innovative and exceptional dining destinations. Set on the fifth floor of the landmark former Dickens & Jones building on Regent Street, Aqua Kyoto has undergone a sophisticated renovation, with the restaurant’s look designed by award-winning international designer Robert Angell and furniture pieces by our manufacturing partners. The open-plan layout, dark timbers, lacquer japanning and artisan copper-gold finish to the metals are inspired by Japanese philosophies surrounding the quest for finding purity out of the impure.

The renovation reworked the room around a central open-plan sushi counter, with the dining floor zoned into more intimate banquette areas at the perimeter and a long bar running along the Regent Street side. The material palette — smoked oak, blackened steel, hammered copper and ribbed glass — was chosen to read as a contemporary continuation of the original 1920s building rather than a competing layer.

Our partners produced banquette frames, bar joinery and decorative panel work across the renovated restaurant, with finishes signed off in coordination with the design team to maintain the carefully judged copper-gold tone consistent with the brief.