If all you have in your loft are some magazine back-issues, a half-built train set and the entire cast of extras from Arachnophobia, you may be thinking of sprucing the space up a bit. You’ll need some serious real estate and the design chops of Ivan Yunakov and his team if you want anything on the scale of Ukraine restaurant-bar Beton though.

Béton brut is French for raw concrete, the derivation of the architectural style Brutalism, and the name of this place has not been lost on its aesthetics; this Kiev loft design has been married with a definite industrial workshop feel. The textured wall of two-by-fours. The seemingly unfinished floor. The bare joinery above the bar, like crazy rafters. A rusted corrugated iron curtain keeping the three “zones” (karaoke/hookah, VIP and children’s) adjoining the main room out of sight. On the zonal doors behind, architectural floor plans have been used as decoration – while not typically regarded as art, certainly an aesthetically pleasing skill.

To lift the heavy-duty mood, the cool grey of the concrete is given a warm glow by the concealed orange and peach strips and the golden pendant lights hanging overhead like steel buttercups on a summer’s day. Beats a pot noodle and the April 1996 edition of Loaded.

Photography, Oleg Stelmah