Conduit Restaurant

Stanley Saitowitz adopts a clever thematic program to turn obtrusive mechanicals into the primary visual element of this new SF eatery.

By Sarah Amelar
This is an excerpt of an article from the January 2009 edition of Architectural Record.

A great “spaghetti” of conduits running along the ceiling and walls dominated the raw space that architect Stanley Saitowitz hoped to convert into a hip San Francisco restaurant. But attempting to hide that endless mesh of electrical, plumbing, and sprinkler lines, he concluded, would make the situation even worse — like covering a huge nose with a bandage. The space, only 9 feet high, would become outright oppressive if he inserted a dropped ceiling. He soon realized, however, that the solution lay in the problem itself, so he determined not only to reveal the abundance of conduits, but to celebrate and even exaggerate it.

Program

The 3,700-square-foot restaurant occupies the entire ground floor of a new low-rise apartment building in San Francisco’s Mission District. The owner, Brain Spiers, a contractor-developer with whom Saitowitz had previously worked, built the structure with the idea of enlisting a restaurant tenant at street level, but when none materialized, he decided to open his own dining venue there, offering California/Mediterranean fare. Saitowitz soon signed on as both architect and partial partner in the venture. But, of course, this pair of first-time restaurateurs needed some guidance. So they enlisted a team — an up-and-coming chef named Justin Deering and his experienced front-of-the-house partner, maître d’ Brian Gavin — to help conceptualize and operate the place. The two proposed calling the restaurant Duo, but the architect, paradoxically inspired by the existing obstacles, hit on the name Conduit.

Aimed toward a laid-back but sophisticated atmosphere, the essential programmatic ingredients included a bar; tables for 88 people; an 800-square-foot open kitchen with counter seating, where a dozen diners could watch the spectacle of cooks at work; a 180-square-foot “wine cellar”/private dining room; and a 242-square-foot restroom area, offering its own theatrical ambience.

Solution

Once Saitowitz decided to turn adversity to advantage, conduits became his interior’s featured ingredient. It wasn’t enough just to expose and highlight the plumbing, electrical, and sprinkler lines, his design expanded the network with faux conduits galore. To the existing mix of copper and galvanized-steel lines, he added look-alike, but purely decorative pipes of galvanized steel, some plain and others powder-coated in copper-colored paint (a more durable and economical solution than real copper). Now conduits, in parallel clusters, not only ascend the walls and cross the ceiling, but also wrap the bar and form screens, cascading like sheets of water, between tables and banquettes.

“The strategy with these conduit partitions,” says Saitowitz, “was to break up the scale. Perceptually, a low ceiling can appear even lower in a big space than in a small one.” Additionally, the whimsical proliferation of piping — a layered 3D weave, with long parallel conduits generating a rhythmic dynamism — enhances the perception of spatial depth.

The silver- and copper-colored tubes, fully cladding the bar, even appear beneath its clear glass countertop. Along the dining room’s perimeter, a path of polished black granite reflects Conduit’s multitude of pipes, further accentuating the effect. Saitowitz gave the central floor area, where the dining tables have been placed, a large square mat of woven vinyl tiles, marked with slightly irregular striations. While the pattern quietly echoes the surrounding metal “stripes,” these resilient floor tiles also provide a much-needed acoustic buffer. (Lining the ceiling above the maze of conduits is another acoustic material, a dense foam, painted black to recede visually.)

To evoke “a sense of theater surrounding the chef,” Saitowitz says he created “spectator” seating at a counter positioned along the open kitchen, at the rear of the dining room. “You can watch the performance, the cooks at work, as you eat,” he explains. Contrasting lighting heightens the drama: While the rest of the restaurant remains dimly lit, the open kitchen, clad in shiny stainless steel, glows with illumination fit for center stage — as well as the practicalities of food preparation.

A corridor, doglegged off the main dining area, leads past the private party room with its single, long table for 14 diners showcased behind a wall of transparent glass dressed with a series of vertical conduit “curtains.” The room’s back wall doubles as a wine cellar, a black floor-to-ceiling rack cut with a circular hole for each bottle. Like the tables, chairs, and cabinetry in the main dining room, the “wine wall” is made of plastic laminate with the appearance of ebonized wood. Here, the same chairs are made of plastic laminate masquerading as zebra wood. As Saitowitz puts it, “Faux ebony, faux zebra wood, and faux conduits!”

Across the corridor is the restaurant’s unisex restroom, which — surprise, surprise — has no visible conduits. Instead, the stalls of titillatingly translucent, icy-green etched glass play against a glossy floor paved in black granite. After all those conduits, the architect says, “I wanted a relief, an unexpected contrast.”

Commentary

When the electrical inspector came to sign-off on the project, she found the abundance of conduits baffling, Saitowitz reports with amusement. “First, she asked: ‘Why all this wiring?’ And then: “Which ones are real?’ ” The ingenious design not only fooled the inspector, but it also successfully alters our perception, turning the crude ingredients into haute cuisine.

Formal name of project: Conduit Restaurant

Location: 280 Valencia St. San Francisco, California

Gross square footage: 3,700 sq.ft.

Owner: 280 Valencia Inc.

Completion Date: Jan 1st 2008

Architect:
Stanley Saitowitz / Natoma Architects Inc.
1022 Natoma St. #3
San Francisco, CA 94103
415.626.8977
415.626.8978

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