arkitrave :: log

Bruce Mau listed this phrase in his Manifesto for Growth, which I mentioned a couple weeks ago.

Recently, my wife and I ate at Carrabba’s, an Italian chain that just opened up in Buffalo. I am always ambivalent about chain restaurants. On one hand, you know what you’re gonna get. On the other, it’s rarely the quality or unique experience you find with small locally-owned restaurants. And sometimes, it’s downright bad food. So my expectations weren’t very high, especially considering the almost comical use of stone and Dryvit on the exterior. I think it was supposed to look like it was set in the side of a rock wall, in the hill country of Italy. Except for the parking lot and Best Buy next door, it might have worked.

However, I was amazed by many things about my visit. The food is wonderful, really. A good step up from the aforementioned “When you’re here, you’re family” joint, and better than even Macaroni Grill, which I love for the Bellinis and the awesome bread. The service was impeccable - our server was extremely knowledgeable about the food, and was more attentive than any server I have had in recent years, save maybe Opus on Prince Arthur, which costs about $200 more. And they had salt and pepper grinders on the table. Every restaurant should have salt and pepper grinders on the tables.

That said, the architecture is simply atrocious. Now, all chain restaurants suffer a bit in the built environment department, but some, like Chili’s, make good use of materials, contrasts in color and surface, different ceiling heights, partial partitions, etc. And the exteriors, though a little watered down, are at least well-composed and well-proportioned.

Carrabba’s building is, at the risk of repeating myself, atrocious. The light level was good. But it is one open room, divided with an entry in the middle. The booths have turqoise vinyl seats. The tables are a fake-marble-look laminate. The ceilings are suspended acoustic tiles. The open kitchen visible at the rear of the dining room has harsh fluorescent lighting that is a total disconnect with the dim light in the dining room, so it stands out like an injured thumb. There is no hierarchy of spaces, no interesting material usage, and the materials you come into contact with most often (seats and table) are synthetic material that really has no character.

And bringing this back around to the Bruce Mau comment I started with, the bathrooms use, I think, entirely standard Home Depot-look materials. They are not totally generic, like white square tiles (that would have been better as it wouldn’t have drawn attention to itself), they are just non-generic enough to show how generic they are, if that makes any sense. There is even a silly floral-print curtain thing across the vanity.

The problem with standard Home Depot materials is that everyone has them. You have to actually put materials together intelligently, not just select them because they look fancy and throw them together. Standard details only work if there is a greater architectural agenda that makes use of those materials, rather than letting the materials dictate the architectural agenda.

The same goes for software in the visual design world. But I didn’t need to say that.