Restaurant Design Trends: Down To the Wire...Mesh Fabric, That Is

Inside and out, some of the world's most recognizable restaurants, lounges and hotels have become showcases for fashionable, functional and versatile design innovations. Whether you're in New York or Miami, San Francisco or even Las Vegas, the dining experience includes style, ambiance and quality food.

Suzanne Stephens, in her Architectural Record article "Ambience is All," pinpoints the importance of environment for the patron: "Show us a restaurant where you can see a fluorescent-lit kitchen through swinging doors, where furnishings are garish and out of scale with the room, and we say no amount of delicately seared foie gras will tempt us back." And she's right-nowadays, restaurant-goers would have to be pretty hard-pressed (and hungry!) to shell out serious money in a place that skimps on the ambience. Customers are not just paying for food-they're paying for an experience.

This dining "experience" has only been strengthened by innovations in atmosphere and décor, and owners and designers have reveled in the new materials available to help them create the "wow" factor. "Because it's trendy, designers and architects are brewing up ingenious uses for textures, but it's also a big problem-solver in restaurants," says Timothy Schoenheit, vice president of marketing for the premier wire-mesh fabric company, Cascade Coil Drapery based in Portland, OR. This versatile fabric is one of the textures increasingly being integrated into restaurant design, and has allowed restaurants to eliminate space challenges by creating objects like dividers and separator curtains, and by putting window treatments on double duty to block glaring sun while looking fabulous.

And the trendier the food becomes, the greater the demand is for upping a restaurant's visual impact. Forget the standard design solutions of the 20th Century. Restaurants gain a competitive edge by ensuring fashion and function go hand in hand. Wine racks, curtains threaded with LEDs, and even security applications are just a few of the ways designers have incorporated wire mesh in high style.

Farina Focaccia & Cucina Italiana, a trendy new San Francisco restaurant, needed a security gate that would - among other things - be aesthetically pleasing. Bay Area architects Monica Viarengo and Brett Terpeluk wanted to avoid using clunky and intrusive metals, not just to address the visual requirement, but because a lightweight, flexible material was needed to fit snugly around the building's distinctively curved façade. The solution needed to be strong, of course, to protect against break-ins and graffiti. In addition, the distance between the building's façade and its property line was limited, and so any security gate had to "disappear" when open. Throw into the mix the recessed outdoor patio populated with tables and chairs year round. A flexible wire-mesh gate proved to be the stylish, functional answer.

Adjacent to GooglePlex in Irvine, California, Kimera Restaurant Lounge prides itself on its global fusion cuisine and contemporary, "masculine and modern" décor. But the eatery's most unusual use of texture is on its terrace and patio where wire-mesh fabric is strategically wrapped and draped to block the wind for smokers.

Dollops of texture add ambiance in subtle yet suggestive ways that may not even be readily apparent to customers. Sometimes, wire-mesh texture is there to just, well, look good. At Oasis in Los Angeles, in what would be otherwise unused space, sensual canopies dip down over each booth in the restaurant. Los Angeles Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila wrote, "The décor by designer Eva Schwarz is a psychedelic riff on the idea of Morocco. It features cobalt blue walls, classic Moorish motifs and a mural that enlarges a Moroccan floor-tile pattern to cover an entire wall. Gold-mesh canopies cocoon each booth in its own world. How romantic is that?"

In another innovative use for wire mesh, designers for Casa Bacardi in Tampa fashioned ocean-blue mesh awnings to extend over café seating outside the glass walls of the airport restaurant, evoking the beach atmosphere of the Caribbean. For a provocative wine rack at Craft Bar in New York, designers used Cascade Coil to "cradle" each wine bottle within the frame of the rack.

Whether for function, fashion or both, wire-mesh fabric, among other textures, has brought restaurant design to a new level. And, while the promise of a satisfying meal might get patrons there, it's the combined effort of the ambience and cuisine that not only keeps people coming back but and also talking about their dining experience in between visits.