Retail and restaurant design for challenging locations

Wow.  That’s a difficult space.  We’ll take it.

 by Tom Davis, AIA, LEED AP

Architects and Designers have been coordinating their design visions with program implementation and site evaluation since the beginning of time.   Michelangelo’s Piazza de Campidoglio immediately comes to mind.   Presented with a steep hill-top site and an existing building on one edge, Michelangelo simply created enclosure with a courtyard using two new buildings and ordered the complex with a paver pattern that scales the Piazza in geometric harmony.    What has changed is that for restaurant and retail design, the building sites are most often lease space “units” in a field of columns with opaque roofs with minimal identity. Davis Wince has encountered numerous “architectural interiors” site challenges and has chosen to turn these challenges into design opportunities, much like Michelangelo did at the Piazza de Campidoglio.

The world is flat.

Retail first level entry is a common objective for public tenant improvement space.  Unfortunately, as it turns out, the world is not flat.  Many sites off a public right of way, like the Oasis Restaurant in Athens, require manipulation of the ground plane to get to the slab level of a lease space.  Common bi-products of this condition are unsightly ramps, stairs, guardrails and handrails. What to do?  Here are a couple of suggestions.

• Ramp at less than 1:20.  If the slope of a ramped plane is less than 1:20 no handrails or guardrails are required.   A gently sloped ramp can engage the entire width of a space and give it an unexpected dynamic.
• Create tiers separated by a single riser.   Tiered spaces have traditionally been considered to be more sophisticated and visually appealing.  If you can create a couple tiers a single riser in height, again no hand or guardrails are required and spatially the room can be scaled down and more episodic.
• Design an object stair or ramp.  Changes in grade are most commonly downplayed with banal stair and ramp design to be spatially and monetarily economical.   The result is usually liability to your design.  Instead see these grade changing devices as design sites and celebrate them with generous size, materiality and even color.   If you think about how interiors are photographed, often times circulation elements such as stairs and ramps are featured.   Making these constituents a celebrated part of the design can lift the user’s experience of a public space.

Natural light, what’s that?

Natural light is one of the most valuable resources to interior architecture and retail design. Frequently, it’s not available.   What to do?

• Open up the front and let it flow.  De-materializing the public entry elevation accomplishes many things.   It allows the most natural light available to penetrate the furthest distance into the space.  As well it will “bring the inside out”.  Introducing ambiguity to the boundary of inside vs. outside creates the illusion of a more open and well lit environment.
• Use artificial lighting in creative ways. Lighting design for retail and restaurant locations is as much art as it is science. Energy codes are moving the trends in commercial space lighting away from decorative-but-inefficient pendant and track light fixtures toward LED and fluorescent sources. Turn this into a lighting design opportunity, not a lighting design constraint. Lighting coves, interior skylights, lit soffits, and recessed wall wash light fixtures can add character while highlighting merchandise and design features.

The sky is falling.

Low ceilings – some spaces just have low ceilings.   The economic evolution of retail and restaurant design as a public destination has changed significantly in past decades.   Many core and shell buildings constructed in bygone decades were constructed with a different context of lease rates and different scales of value of retail goods.  The location may still be valid, but the construction may have antiquated characteristics, such as low ceilings.  How do you cope?

• Expose and paint the structure. In today’s retail building environment, more ceiling height equals better space.  Consider removing drop ceilings entirely and design the air distribution systems to be visible.  Often, exposing building structure can increase ceiling heights and volumetric space significantly.
• Remove the ceiling and put some back.  Opening the envelope all the way up and then carefully incorporating acoustical ceiling “clouds” can; address acoustics, highlight programmatic spaces, create sophistication in the commercial environment, and house accent lighting.
• Use light-colored and natural finish materials.  If, despite efforts to raise the finished ceiling height, no options are available, look to your finish palette. Using whites, crèmes, and earth tones are a way for smaller spaces to look bigger.   Strategically place mirrors to increase the perceived physical boundaries of the space.

How many sides in that shape?

Space plans will always be most efficient in a rectangular shaped space.   Unfortunately, some lease spaces are not regular shapes.  This is a potential liability to a tenant who sees an irregular space as being inefficient. And rightfully so.  How do you approach this dilemma?

• Carefully consider your program.   Some elements of a program such as storage or bathrooms might fit nicely into an irregular space.
• Innovate your program to the space. If a space is desirable for all the right reasons except the shape, consider splitting up a segment of the program  in a natural way and multiply the delivery of goods and services in a way that complements a compound or irregular space.

Can you relocate that structural column?

In even the best laid plans, structural columns break up contiguous spaces.  Columns are a necessary roofing evil.   What to do?

• Make the column a design feature.   There are many ways to incorporate structural columns into an interior design.   You can clad and decorate the column in a creative way, locate mirrors on them, place a drink rail or counter, or feature some unique finish materials.
• Another direction is to minimize them with paint.   Creating the smallest possible column enclosure and painting it white or other neutral color will make the column virtually go away.  Distract attention away from the columns in the space plan and create other feature areas to focus the eye in the design.

Where am I?

It’s 2010 people.  Open up the floor plan design.  Compartmentalizing spaces compromises designs.  While it may be possible or desirable to create different room atmosphere, there are other better ways to execute this approach.  Compartmentalized spaces are difficult for way finding, lighting, and security.  Open floor plans promote visual interaction and that is the name of the game in today’s public commercial space design.

By admin on 6/8/10, In Architecture, Retail, Tags Architect Columbus, Architect Denver, Restaurant Architect, Restaurant Design, Retail Architect, Retail Design