Seattle-dependent Olson Kundig’s Comedor Restaurant construction is an urban oasis with its atrium safeguarding its website visitors in this bustling Austin place

Austin, Texas, Usa

“The driving notion for Comedor was a style that orchestrates concerning interior and exterior spaces. The secured internal courtyard permits the cafe to open up wholly throughout these good Austin evenings, but also experience shielded from the urban problem just outside,” explains Olson Kundig’s Design Principal, Tom Kundig.

Situated in one of the busiest intersections in Austin’s central enterprise district, Comedor Cafe, developed by Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig and his design and style group together with McKinney York Architects and The Backyard garden Layout Studio, is a modern Mexican eatery that is by now recognized as an city sanctuary taking a robust corner situation and leaving place for a guarded open-air inner courtyard, revitalizing a previous floor parking whole lot.

For its structural formulation and mixture of materials, Comedor Cafe has been awarded a 2022 American Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Style and City Scientific studies.

A façade of darkish brick interspersed with glass brick glows at evening, piquing curiosity from the avenue whilst screening inside areas from direct perspective.

The inside eating house adjoins the courtyard by means of 4 retractable partitions operated by hand cranks, fully opening Comedor to the courtyard.

The heart of Comedor, this out of doors space permits the action of the restaurant to stream amongst indoor and out of doors spaces.

A discreet entry sequence on the south opens to a glass-wrapped, double-top eating room, in which candlelight and a tonal material palette of metal, wood, and concrete proceed the feeling of secret founded outdoors.

During the inside bar and official dining house, a very careful orchestration of contrasts defines this comfortably refined present day cafe.

Heat leather upholstery, Hickory wooden banquettes and tables, and multi-coloured textiles soften the personalized blackened steel furnishings, which include things like personalized chairs and bar stools.

Sculptural metal mild fixtures, custom made-intended and fabricated for the restaurant, float in the ethereal volume overhead.

Superior home windows generate a linear lightbox that attracts daylight into the cafe inside and provides sights out to the bordering city whilst maintaining a feeling of seclusion and privacy.

The inside eating area adjoins the courtyard as a result of four retractable guillotine window walls. Operated by way of guide hand cranks, these kinetic options allow for Comedor to open up absolutely to the outside.

This will allow the action of the cafe to flow concerning indoor and out of doors areas, for a flexible, choreographed expertise that responds to Austin’s climatic situations.

Here company can practical experience Austin’s warm, sunny weather whilst delivering a safeguarded interior refuge throughout the hottest days.

The heart of Comedor is the courtyard, which serves as a desert oasis and sanctuary to detach guests from the city bustle.

Along the perimeter, custom made bench seating encourages friends to get pleasure from their food items and drink among cacti and succulents, Palo Verde and shoe-string Acacia trees, and a tranquil water fountain.

Encouraged by the nightlife in Mexico City, the courtyard also invitations impromptu dancing in the night.

The courtyard is bordered by the historic McGarrah Jessee Making, showcasing its over just one-hundred-calendar year-aged uncovered brick as a textural contrast to modern day architecture and linking Comedor to the background of the encompassing district.

Comedor is celebrated for the two its design and menu, like quite a few layout publication characteristics and a top 10 ranking on Esquire’s 22 Ideal New Dining establishments in The us record in 2019.

What’s more, Comedor provides healthy, worry-releasing shops to their employees and regional provider field personnel, like a weekly operating club and the Austin department of the addiction assist team Ben’s Close friends.

These initiatives goal to move the assistance industry’s “post-shift” culture absent from drug and liquor use in direction of a life style that supports health, wellness, and connections amongst individuals.

Project: Comedor Restaurant
Architects: Olson Kundig
Style and design Staff: Tom Kundig, Bob Jakubik, Joe Fillipelli, Claire Fontaine, and Phil Turner, Gizmo Layout
Architects of File: McKinney York Architects
Landscape Architects: The Garden Structure Studio
Inside Designer: Laina Navarro, and Megan Adams
Standard Contractor: The Burt
Team Developer: William Ball
Consumers: William Ball, Connor Oman, and Philip Speer, Comedor
Photographers: Casey Dunn and Aaron Leitz