Ever go to a restaurant and the chairs poked you in all the
wrong places, and the gray wall color put you to sleep? It's
not something you think about too often, but many times your
dining experience is in the hands of someone who has nothing
to do with cooking your food or serving your meal: It's the
person who designed the space.
A restaurant experience should be sublime, and, when combined
with great food, the interior design of the space itself--its
furniture, lighting and art--should appeal to your senses
and transport you. When you want to design a really memorable
restaurant, you leave a place for Lee Winn at your table.
Winn, a University of Oregon graduate and the designer of
Casa U-Betcha, Coffee People, Macheezmo Mouse and Zefiro,
was one of the first Portland architects to design exciting
restaurants that forged a connection between food and interior.
One of Winn's pivotal creations was that mid-'80s hot spot
Casa U-Betcha. Ushered in by owners Jeff Steichen and John
Stafford, this little Tex-Mex bar and restaurant burst onto
the scene with a riot of color and a hyped-up carnival atmosphere.
Winn, along with interior designer Jennifer Marshall, took
the former tavern space down to its studs and hired a couple
of very skeptical contractors to put it all back together
again. They used materials like tangerine-colored sheet
metal and galvanized steel that borrowed heavily from both
the look of the streets and warehouse-industrial environments.
The manhole-meets-garage, off-kilter angles and helter-skelter
tile work had a sense of humor, and all of a sudden the
'80s didn't seem so bad.
"Portland had this conservative cloud hanging over it,
but people were ready for a change," Winn says. "Back then,
I felt almost like an importer of ideas from other places."
Casa U-Betcha hung a bright light on Portland's streets,
but when Winn went on to slay another corner of Northwest
Portland in 1992, he challenged the city's entire view of
what a restaurant could be. Zefiro's simple and elegant
dining room shook Portland's black-shoed movers and shakers
and imported a sense of urban, refined cool that locals
formerly got a whiff of only when they hit Seattle or San
Francisco. The owners of Zefiro, Winn says, "were visionaries.
They knew how things could be."
Bruce Carey, one of the original owners of Zefiro, brought
Winn aboard after meeting him and seeing his work at other
places. Carey approached Winn with a budget, and then they
worked together to create Zefiro's environment.
"One thing he did that I really liked," says Carey, "was
after showing him a picture of my favorite arch, he came
back with a design that used the shape throughout."
Winn had intense discussions with Carey and the other two
owners about what they wanted. "Minimalism breeds elegance,"
says Winn. "Bruce said he wanted a place where people could
wear jeans and feel comfortable, but because it was minimal,
people got dressed up."
As Portland's evolution continues, the design revolution
follows. If Winn's signature shout-out to the 1980s is Casa
and to the 1990s, Zefiro, then the year 2000 is symbolized
by his recent redesign of Caprial's Bistro in the homey
Sellwood area. Winn, who's been designing on his own for
the past 15 years, merged his company with Sienna Architecture
Company in January, but Caprial's is one of his solo projects.
"The intent was not to do too much," he says. "That's because
of the neighborhood, No. 1, and No. 2, because the food
was intended to be the main focus." Caprial's has a straightforward,
clean design that allows the colorful Northwest cooking
to stand out. Lo-fi, ambient hues--pale yellow, dark purple
and green--repeat in the glass wall behind the bar and in
the corner of the open dining room. At night, the multicolored
squares seem to glow. An abstract painting by a friend of
owners John and Caprial Pence hangs in the bar, and ceramics
by Caprial's father decorate the walls of the main room.
The movable banquets create versatile seating arrangements,
able to accommodate anything from a group of oldsters celebrating
a birthday to a blend of neighbors, business people and
tourists. Overall, the design reflects a certain Portland
lifestyle: simultaneously squeaky-clean and organic, high-tech
and folksy.
Though Winn's main focus these days is hotels and hospitality
environments like the Avalon Hotel soon to break ground
on Southwest Macadam Avenue, he says he would relish the
chance to do a really far-out design if the opportunity
arises.
"I'm ready to do something wild," Winn says. "But you have
to have a client who is willing to go there."
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Willamette Week | originally
published October 13,
1999
|
