Designing a restaurant is one thing. Designing a restaurant in which a five year old and a 45 year old might be equally content is quite another. At NESTT, a new 11,000 square foot venue in Dubai’s Q East development, two local design practices have taken on precisely that assignment.

H2R, the studio led by brothers Hasan and Husain Roomi, has joined forces with Omar Nakkash of Nakkash Design Studio to create a place that combines the pleasures of a good café with the energy of a children’s playground. The interesting part is how little the former has been sacrificed to accommodate the latter.

The interiors have a distinctly grown up sensibility. Timber, pale upholstery and an understated palette establish the character of the café, while generous curves give the architecture a softer edge. The centrepiece is a double height staircase clad in grey burl veneer. Its richly patterned grain introduces a touch of retro glamour, an unexpected choice in a venue where small children are among the principal customers.

The children’s quarters, meanwhile, are considerably more exuberant. On the ground floor, green walls, illustrated branches and custom wallpaper by The Wallpaper Kids establish a miniature forest. A vertical tunnel takes young visitors upwards into a blue world conceived to suggest the sky. The change in scenery gives the journey a narrative of its own. Play installations by HPS and suspended spheres by DreamLab complete the setting.

The more demanding work has taken place behind the scenes. One of the perennial problems of family hospitality is noise. NESTT’s designers enlisted acoustic consultancy 21dB to study how sound would travel through the building. Puzzle shaped ceiling panels absorb noise in the café, while glazed partitions, treated walls and acoustic ceilings help separate the various activities. Even the loudspeakers, supplied by Booq, were chosen with their architectural integration in mind.

There is a similar degree of calculation in the floor plan. Parents can see into the play areas from the hospitality spaces, while other rooms offer opportunities to work, meet or spend an afternoon without necessarily participating in the children’s activities.

“We wanted to challenge the idea that a family environment needs to feel exclusively designed for children,” say Hasan and Husain Roomi. It is a sensible ambition, particularly in Dubai, where cafés increasingly serve as informal offices, meeting places and extensions of the home.

NESTT also reflects a growing interest in hospitality venues that accommodate more than one purpose. A table can host a business conversation in the morning and a family lunch a few hours later. The architecture must be flexible enough to manage both, without making either feel like an afterthought.

The project makes a persuasive case for treating children’s spaces with the same architectural attention as any other interior. Its most successful feature might be that adults have been given just as much consideration. In family hospitality, that remains a surprisingly uncommon luxury.