AN EVOLVING MENU OF DESIGN OPTIONS
More than a year in, COVID-19 continues to make each venture, major and minor, a guessing game. “Every day, the guidelines are changing,” says Melissa Bowers, the designer behind such buzzworthy projects as American Bar in New York’s West Village and the Faena Hotel in Miami. At the beginning, one of the easiest fixes (other than wrapping every other table in barricade tape) was to install Plexiglas — as barriers between customers and kitchen staff, between tables, and sometimes even between individuals at the same table. Bowers recalls her horror when Plexi was drilled directly into a beautiful walnut table in one of her upcoming restaurants. “Everything should be like restoring an antique — it needs to be reversible.”
Indeed, expedience was overwhelmingly favoured over thoughtful design as food and beverage businesses went into survival mode. But designers have had a role to play, then and now, in reconfiguring spaces. “For existing clients,” explains Kristen Lien, principal of Alberta studio Frank Architecture, “we were just trying to help them through. We would do a quick exercise to help see the potential of their space in the context of the latest health guidelines or bounce business ideas off of one another. Frank’s foundation is built on strong relationships — and we have families, too, so we feel like we’re in it together with them.”
In general, the hospitality designer’s scope has expanded toward a longview approach that emphasizes here-to-stay principles of increased ventilation, circulation and flexibility. Justine Dumas, of the Montreal firm Appareil, explains, “We now make sure that the layout provides for the possibility of removing or adding tables. At the moment, the idea of larger tables with everyone sharing their meals — which we love — is not something that we can propose to our client. This new reality will create new styles of restaurants. And as designers, we must find a way to manage these new constraints and still provide spaces that are beautiful and interesting.” Whether it hews to the latest recommendations or not, good design is good design: Appareil’s interior for Le Clocher Penché, conceived before the pandemic and so not influenced by indoor dining rules during its design phase, features many of the musts of a safe yet compelling restaurant. “We were lucky because we