fresh

Address: 894 Queen Street West
Architect: Giannone Associates Architects Inc.
Clients: Ruth Tal Brown and Barry Alper

Project Description

The project develops two new façades at the base of an existing turn of the century brick building and creates a new west-facing outdoor patio. The 50-seat restaurant is strategically organized to smoothly negotiate a unique "take-out" component alongside the popular dining room.

The layered rind of soft, sand-blasted Douglas Fir panels ship-lapped in front of a supple strata of wallpaper-wrapped Gypsum Wall Board, occasionally supported by a protective brittle skin of glass tile, selectively cuts back or unravels or de-laminates to expose moments of entry, display and visual access. The Crawford Street-oriented dining room is virtually reflected at the existing masonry wall, which is aggressively eroded by a repetition of grand windows, to spill into an outdoor version of itself. The double glazed openings rise from the floor and align five bands of parallel indoor/outdoor table surfaces, in order to blur the indoor versus outdoor experience.

Jurors' Comments

In a city where the opportunities provided by corners have too often been ignored, the designers of fresh have made the street-level corner entrance of this vegetarian restaurant a bright and special place, visually responsive in positive ways to the dense, mixed urban conditions that surround it. The corner opens toward both a small, quiet urban park and busy Queen Street with a welcoming, resolute gesture, celebrating both the street and the lifestyle choices of its mostly young, creative clientele.