Workbook: New Life for a Historic DC Building

For a new outpost of Matchbox, the firm Studio3877 transformed a 1907 Washington, DC, building into a warm bistro. Photography by Ron Ngaim/Courtesy Studio3877.

“It was in rough shape from years of use and misuse and had seen better days,” architect David Shove-Brown says of an 8,000-square-foot, 1907 building in Washington, DC, that he and his Studio3877 partner David Tracz had been asked transform it into the latest outpost of Matchbox. Over the years, the building had done duty as a bowling alley, a jazz club and a car dealership and still retained a great character, so, he says, “It was pretty clear we wanted to be true to the building”—with a straightforward approach to its history and materials that matched the restaurant’s approach to ingredients.  

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Workbook: Standard Reinvents the Lemonade Stand in Beverly Hills

Standard's design for the Pressed Juicery's Beverly Hills store features oak timbers arranged according to the FIbonacci Code. Image courtesy Benny Chan | fotoworks.When Hayden Slater, one of the minds behind the Pressed Juicery, approached the architecture firm Standard, helmed by Jeffrey Allsbrook and Silvia Kuhle, he was thinking big and small. In addition to a space in Beverly Hills (it would ultimately become both the design idea lab and flagship for the company), Slater and his partners planned on rolling out several more locations, ranging in size from small to smaller. They wanted a firm that could create a concept flexible enough to fit a compact storefront on down to almost a niche, with elements that could be incorporated or not without diminishing the character of the brand.

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Restaurant at Royal Academy in London by Tom Dixon

British designer Tom Dixon finished the interior of the Restaurant at the Royal Academy on January 19, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, England. Dixon oversaw the design as Creative Director of Design Research Studio. The restaurant is part of the Peyton and Byrne restaurant group, which also runs the renowned dining rooms at the National Gallery.

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Smoke-Like Sculpture as a Narrative of Restaurant's Innovation of Barbeque Cuisine

Wexler’s is a barbecue pit in San Francisco designed by San Francisco based architects Aidlin Darling. The centerpoint of the restuarant is a dynamic undulating ceiling installation evoking barbecue smoke. The sculpture is composed of laser cut MDF fins and bridges the gap between old and new by linking the modern insertion to the historic facade.

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