Hospitality Design - December 2016 - 95

Corporate
> Elevated
Restaurants
Restaurants inside office buildings are giving
standalone dining destinations a run for their
money. "Dining spaces have become places for
meeting, creating ideas, and working through
problems. It only makes sense that a company
would want to continue critical thinking and
ideating outside of the traditional desk-andchair situation," says Greg Bradshaw, partner of
AvroKO. Dropbox's San Francisco headquarters,
for instance, is laid out to resemble different
neighborhoods. Bradshaw and his local studio

> Casual Fine Dining

maximized this by taking a flexible, "food hallstyle dining approach" to the cafeteria, with
"material selections varying from room to room in
color, tone, texture, and physical makeup to give
the diner a different daily experience." Although
united by gauzy linen screens and concrete, one
room flaunts a suspended ceiling grid of layered
walnut tones, while gray linen upholstery is
pinned against a light hickory bench held together
by a blackened steel tube in another.
For Union 82, the restaurant and café at
Symantec in Mountain View, California, Gensler
wanted to create "an escape from the typical
corporate amenities, with an after-hours place to

One of the current dining landscape's most significant
observations is the ever-shifting definition of luxury,
which places a premium on experiential factors rather
than traditional upscale trappings. A prime example
is New York's soon-to-arrive Made Nice, an affordable
counter-style joint from Daniel Humm and Will
Guidara, the powerhouse duo behind Michelin-starred
restaurants Eleven Madison Park and the NoMad.
Stonehill & Taylor Architects worked on the latter,
and now the local firm has been tapped to dream up
Made Nice's look. On the West Coast, the Restaurant
at Meadowood in Napa Valley is a coveted fine-dining
destination, and in the early part of the year chef
Christopher Kostow and restaurant director Nathaniel
Dorn will also step into more relaxed territory with
Charter Oak. Designed by St. Helena- and Sausalito,
California-based Backen, Gillam & Kroeger Architects,
it will revolve around simple family-style meals.
Another way to instill a welcoming vibe is
embracing a feel-good nostalgic aesthetic. Consider
Paley, the Hollywood restaurant from hospitality group
Plan Do See that telegraphs the Golden Age of radio.
Courtesy of local studio Bishop Pass, patrons eat amid
tambour wood columns and a perforated metal wall
reminiscent of circa-1930s and '40s microphones.

Photo by JASPER SANIDAD

Photo by GARRETT ROWLAND

The concrete-clad cafeteria at Dropbox's
headquarters resembles a food hall

Union 82's bar area

toss around ideas or watch a game," says Sondra
Law, associate and hospitality design director
at the San Francisco office. Law and her team
opted for natural materials and to illuminate
the valley's agricultural and canning heritage.
Midcentury undertones nod to the original
Fairchild Semiconductor workspace, just as
fabrics and textures channel the bohemian aura
promoted by the inventors of the silicon transistor
in the '50s and '60s. It feels, Law says, "as if it is not
on campus but rather in a favorite hotel lobby or
restaurant, a place to entertain guests while also
having access to a great cocktail or quinoa salad-
in other words a true hospitality experience."

Paley celebrates the Golden Age of radio and Hollywood

Photo by DYLAN + JENI

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