This lime-green cocktail bar on the 38th floor of a Zaha Hadid building has 20,000 tiny lights and we are not okay

Somewhere above Hong Kong's skyline, perched on the 38th floor of a building designed by the late, great Zaha Hadid Architects, there is a bar glowing lime green with 20,000 tiny lights. It is called Peridot. It looks like the inside of a bioluminescent dream. And yes, you can get a fermented plant cocktail there while you try to process all of that.

The building alone deserves a paragraph

The Henderson - Zaha Hadid Architects' Hong Kong tower that completed in 2024 - is already the kind of building that makes you stop mid-street and crane your neck. So when Toronto-based Studio Paolo Ferrari was handed the keys to its top-floor bar, the pressure to not just slap some pendant lights and a marble counter in there must have been immense. Their answer? "Timeless futurism." Which sounds like a vibe a philosophy student coined at 2am, but here it actually makes sense.

20,000 lights and the philosophy behind them

The studio's design for Peridot leans hard into the idea that the future doesn't have to feel cold or clinical. The lime-green palette is bold without being aggressive, and those 20,000 tiny lights scattered across the space do something genuinely interesting - they make the room feel alive, like it's breathing. It's futuristic in the way that good science fiction is futuristic: warm, textured, and somehow deeply human.

According to Dezeen, Studio Paolo Ferrari framed the whole project around that "timeless futurism" concept, which means the space is designed to feel cutting-edge without having an expiration date stamped on it. Bold claim. But walking into a room with twenty thousand lights in it is pretty hard to argue with.

The drinks, because we have priorities

Peridot's menu is fermentation-forward and plant-based, which is either exactly your thing or the sentence that just made you close this tab. But honestly, fermentation-forward cocktails in a building designed by Zaha Hadid, lit by 20,000 glowing specks, 38 floors above Hong Kong? The theatrical setting might just be enough to make you try something made from koji and kumquat and absolutely love it.

This is the kind of bar that exists at the intersection of architecture, gastronomy, and "wait, where am I right now?" - and that's a rare and genuinely exciting place to be.