Restaurant designs gain elegance as city becomes more cosmopolitan
Peter Wilson
Sun
Architect Jon Sunderland (foreground), and Bob Lindsay, owner of Lift Bar Grill, which reflects city restaurants’ new design trend. Photograph by : Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
The weather outside the trendy Lift Bar Grill, just behind the Bayshore on Coal Harbour, is distinctly undecided. Sometimes it’s cloudy, and then it moves into sun and back into cloud again.
Which makes Vancouver-based architect Jon Sunderland’s point.
“With Lift we had to emphasize the warmth and the light inside as well,” said Sunderland a partner in SmartDesign Group, which designed Lift for owner Bob Lindsay. “In Vancouver, you can’t rest your laurels on the view when it isn’t there.”
At the same time, when the weather cooperates, all the windows in Lift can be removed to make it into what Sunderland — who designs restaurants all around the world — calls a convertible.
“It’s like taking the top down in your car, and it’s amazing,” said Sunderland. “The character changes and it has a totally different personality.”
But, windows in or out, Lift fits into what Sunderland sees as a main trend in restaurant design in Vancouver.
“Vancouver is a unique city with all the condominiums and the urban lifestyle because we have a downtown that works,” said Sunderland. “So the trend here is toward more social interaction.”
And that interaction is, logically enough, produced by designing restaurants that have a similar feel to the condominiums in which people already live.
“While the West Coast has a certain character — and that’s a very warm, rustic wood-type character — we took a more contemporary look with Lift,” said Sunderland. “And that concept was to give a real residential feel, as if you were over at someone’s condominium and having a kitchen party.”
Among the elements that make up Lift is a cocktail bar that becomes a food bar where people eat.
“And what that bar does for us is improves interaction on a Friday or a Saturday night so that people have more of a tendency to talk to one another or even to total strangers.”
Lindsay said that visitors from everywhere like the feel of Lift.
“We’ve had guys sitting up at the bar that travel the world and they take me aside and they say, Bob, you know what. There’s nothing in New York that you don’t have out here.”
The upper deck of Lift has an open fire pit with eight chairs around it, and that too, is part of a trend towards open outdoor spaces — even though in Vancouver the ambience has to be modified during rainy weather.
“On our deck we have 10 by 10-foot umbrellas that open up and hook together,” said Lindsay.
Interior general contractor Ron Gerrard of Herron Construction, who has built such restaurants as Aqua Riva, Salmon House on the Hill, Wildflower in the Chateau Whistler along with a number of White Spots and Earls, came into the business in Vancouver some 20 years ago.
“When we first started, everybody was going away from those dark, dingy style restaurants that the Keg was famous for,” said Gerrard. “And one of the innovators was a designer called David Vance who came up with the Earl’s concept, which was all open plan where you wanted to be seen and you wanted to feel the people.”
Other restaurants followed suit like the Cactus Club and Red Robin and Joey Tomatoes, said Gerrard.
“Then we started to grow and become more aware of what was going on globally and we started to grow up as a city and recognize fine dining,” said Gerr-ard.
Now, he added, with restaurants that wouldn’t be out of place in New York, London or Paris, the city is going away from cookie-cutter style design and creating a unique environment to match the cuisine.
“Now they go for an emphasis on material and workmanship,” said Gerrard.
“Lift just opened in Coal Harbour and of course there’s Aqua Riva and West and Blue Water Cafe. And those restaurants have popped up over the last few years and they’re successful and they’re thriving and they’ve succeeded.”
Gerrard said that their common thread is one of quiet sophistication that matches the food.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
