Category Archives: Bar

The Veranda, The new Hallway?

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Its been a long summer of hard graft, hence the last post being in April. I did get away on holiday once and managed to find the time at least to think about the blog, even though its taken me until now act on that thought.

Readers in Pembrokshire will recognise the building above, the Tafarn Sinc in Rosebush. Its a familiar haunt for my family, well the Welsh half at least.

Vernacular buildings are often of the place, built using local materials, techniques and traditions so the Tafarn Sinc has always intrigued me.

You usually see the veranda building type in tropical climates, where its extended roof-line shades windows, provides cooler outdoor living space and allows separation from the ground promoting airflow under the building.

The appalling weather we had during our week convinced me this building type can also work well for a wet British summer, allowing covered outdoor space and a connection to the landscape. A place to be outside without fully committing to the elements.

Perhaps some building types can translate across climates and cultures. I’d love to see a new housing development with veranda’s promoting street side living, with residents out on the street. Better than the dingy hallway surely.

http://tafarnsinc.co.uk/

The Quality

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Three restaurants.

One Italian, One Spanish, One Turkish.

All are independent businesses, family owned in fact.

They are not held back by the corporate guidelines of a chain.

They are filled with the kind of customers who value an authentic experience.

These places are not consciously designed.

Rather the spaces are an accumulation of ideas from different people, sometimes generations.

They are about the informal enjoyment of food, not just its presentation

They create and add to the community. These are real places. Comfortable and unpretentious.

They have what Christopher Alexander describes as ‘the quality without a name’. *

The ‘quality’ is something remarkable that makes a place feel whole. It’s not possible to describe it specifically Alexander says, but it’s a feeling you get in a place or space when you feel most ‘alive’.

My three restaurants  feel ‘alive’. I feel ‘alive’ in them. A result of the building, the diners, the owners, and the atmosphere all being in some sort of sync.

My interpretation of this is that we as humans have the ability to discern whether this quality exists (the space is alive) or not (the space is dead). This is a basic instinct that makes us feel comfortable or uncomfortable respectively. This must be a natural response from way back that we extend to our current human/urban environment.

Designing buildings or at least bits of buildings, its assumed by many that this ‘quality’ can just be conjured. Surely it’s easy to create a space with this complex layering of feeling, atmosphere and social vibrancy.

Here’s the reality.

Something this complete must be arrived at over time.

You might get some of the way with a few good decisions but often a ‘designed’ space can miss the mark.

If you try to fake the ‘quality’, it’s obvious.

You must program a space to work towards the ‘quality’. Plant the seeds that will grow. Prioritise slowness in the spaces development. Allow for flex.  Don’t fix things in stone.

A good restaurant will concentrate on delivering the food in the most simple, beautiful way. They reduce the menu choice to a handful of great dishes but rotate and develop these over time depending on feedback, ingredients and seasonality.

A restaurant space should be the same. Do a few things well and grow into the space. Keep what works and discard what fails.

Pretty soon you will have a more amazingly complex space than you could ever have designed in one go. A space that has evolved with the ‘quality’.

Small independent businesses often grasp this approach more easily. They are constrained by budget which limits growth. They find themselves creating a space in a series of steps. It’s exactly this process that allows for the ability to change things as they go along.

It’s exactly this evolution that leads to the ‘quality’. An interconnectedness of context, building, layout, customers, food and service.

These spaces have character, not sterility. They become unique to a particular business and place.

It doesn’t matter so much what my three restaurants look like.

In fact I deliberately won’t share images here. They are best judged on how they feel to actually be there, which is the point of the ‘quality’.  An image reduces things to a visual assessment which is only one part of the ‘quality’.

There are similar venues in your neighbourhood.  They are without doubt the best places to eat.

Go and look for the ‘quality without a name’. How would you start to work towards it in your space?

For more insight into Alexander’s  theories on space and place get his book here;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Timeless-Building-Center-Environmental-Structure/dp/0195024028/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1323985146&sr=8-3

If you run a business from a building, it would be good to remember that humans are pre-programmed to look for the ‘quality’ If you manage to create this, they will come.

*Christopher Alexander – The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

Bar and Kitchen

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Friends of mine at Path Design have recently completed the Bishopsgate Kitchen, a great new tapas bar near London’s Liverpool Street.

The food is fantastic and the space feels great. Reclaimed timber and a lack of synthetic finishes give the scheme an atmosphere that many new projects lack. Often newness make for a sterile, too obviously designed experience. That coupled with no-one taking control and owning a space means many projects never achieve that magic lived in quality we all look for in buildings.

This space has a relaxed and open ended feel. You feel things are left to chance, for future development and experimentation. It strikes me that tapas might be a good analogy for building design. The endless combination and re-combination of ingredients and dishes. That’s pretty much how we make use of our spaces in real life.