Abox seat for the bayou
By Colley Hodges
In the Kitchen, patrons point their phones toward the bayou. Instead of Instagramming their meals, diners at the small restaurant in the Dunlavy train their cameras past the chandeliers to the sprawling live oak that envelops one of the restaurant’s fully glazed façades. The interior fades into the periphery and focus shifts to Buffalo Bayou Park.
The reflected glare of the chandeliers is the only reminder of the shell at the edge of the building before the green patchwork of leaves and branches. But a turn of the head reveals open sky looking down on Lost Lake — the re-created pond whose banks failed in the 1970s. Broad-shouldered high-rises loom on the horizon.
These are the impressions of the Dunlavy. It delineates the border of bayou-side development. It is a perch from which to view Houston’s most iconic landscape — a bayou box seat. It is a hovering mass behind the trees — an eyebrow at the banks of the bayou. What you see depends on where you stand.
The street
Allen Parkway is an undulating yet definitive edge of development. Cars hum around its curves and pass beneath rising concrete structures south of the Dunlavy.
At the edge of the road, the topography drops, and recirculated water spills over tiered concrete pools leading to Lost Lake. Pedestrian pathways sweep down from the pavement.
They travel along the pond until the road and cars disappear, leaving only the tops of buildings above the trees.
Permeable pavers combine with asphalt, decomposed granite and concrete. Decomposed granite was chosen to minimize impact on sensitive trees; asphalt matches the paths throughout the park.
Owing its name to the closest cross street, the Dunlavy reads like a long capped wall, dividing the roadside and the lake from the bayou banks.
The building’s architectural vocabulary originates with the notion of resilience. It sits on heavy concrete columns of board-formed concrete, which lift its lowest beams 18 inches above the 100-year flood event.
“We know the bayou is going to flood. It has to,” said Larry Speck, senior principal at Page, the architecture firm responsible for the Dunlavy. “Every decision had to do with making sure it could flood and the building not be damaged.”
High water was not the only hazard; the massive columns had to be able to resist the large rocks and even downed trees that can be swept along the bayou’s banks during major storms.
Between the columns, the building is clad with massaranduba, a durable South American hardwood. The building’s lower level is unairconditioned, opaque storage, currently stocked with rental kayaks for use along the bayou. The ends of the building transition to floor-to-ceiling glass, demarcating a visitor’s center at the southwest end and the Kitchen at the northeast.
The Kitchen
The interior is an eclectic play of contrasts. Victorianinspired furniture and 43 chandeliers are set off against the base building’s siteresponsive modernism.
The black exposed ceiling, dark-gray carpet tiles and rustic wood tabletops soak up the light, making the glowing chandeliers seem brighter.
Yet the predominant impression is what’s behind the glass. Leaves and sky are the real finishes. Patrons are spectators.
The dual-concept restaurant was opened by Clark Cooper Concepts in late 2015, with breakfast and lunch service during the day and private events by night.
“Our goal was to create a space that is elegant, yet simple,” said Grant Cooper, president and founder of Clark Cooper Concepts, who — along with Jacy, his wife — is responsible for the interior design. “We always wanted to have a restaurant with chandeliers to bring a relaxing, yet elegant feel that juxtaposes with the natural feel of Buffalo Bayou.”
A covered outdoor patio adjacent to the main dining area is nested within a grove of trees. It’s unexpectedly pleasant, even during rainstorms or summer heat.
Shades and overhead fans regulate exposure and airflow. The shades, combined with outdoor heaters, make the patio comfortable during cold weather, said Cooper.
With the shades lowered, the landscape is a haze. The translucent roof is speckled with a series of small bulbs. The lamps seem to be frozen midswirl, cast off by the circulation of the blurred fan blades.
The bayou
The bayou walkways weave along the banks. Some are caked with mud. In spots, there is the smell of stagnant water and the whine of mosquitoes. The silted waters are still beneath native oak, pine, sweetgum, cypress and sycamore.
There are glimpses of the Dunlavy through the leaves. The interior looks dark, and the striated gray concrete seems to have grown out of the strata of the bayou soil.
The Buffalo Bayou Partnership wanted to establish a small multipurpose facility at one of the only areas in the park that could be developed outside the highest risk of flooding.
The building is one of the few that has embraced the bayou, Houston’s driving feature of urban development and ecology.
“It is difficult in Houston to find or develop settings for architecture with such a direct relationship to nature,” said Scott McCready, principal at SWA Group and the project’s senior landscape designer.
Integrating the Dunlavy with other park services has been successful, according to Buffalo Bayou president Anne Olson.
Eventually the Kitchen is expected to offer more parkfriendly options — maybe picnic baskets with food, said Cooper — so that the restaurant might serve as the beginning of a sequence of activities along the bayou: kayak or bike rentals, boat tours, or visits to art and architectural draws like the Cistern.
“Not everyone who is going to the Dunlavy is using the park. That’s one of the great things about it,” said Olson. “People are going to the Dunlavy to see what the park has to offer.” Colley Hodges is a former journalist and current member of Kirksey Architecture’s EcoServices Team. This article originally appeared on OffCite.org, a publication of the Rice Design Alliance, a civic engagement organization in the Rice School of Architecture.