Houston's Boston, Massachusetts
For the first location in New England for the widespread restaurant brand Houston's, this location was ideal. It is directly across a busy pedestrian thoroughfare from historic Faneuil Hall, in an area teeming with tourists and office workers. But the space the restaurant was to occupy — a cave-like volume under the elevated plaza of an office tower — presented exceptional design challenges. Bentel & Bentel dealt with this situation in several creative ways. One key step was to design a forward extension of the space, which gives it greater visibility as well as additional square-footage. Taking cues from the area's severe masonry structures, some with bronze-capped domes or cupolas, Bentel & Bentel clad this extension — both walls and roof — in bronze. They then opened up its public face with an extensive glass front framed with a bold, simply detailed bronze "proscenium." To further mitigate the cavern character of the interior, they opened glazed slits in the bronze roof and wall surfaces to admit shafts of daylight. Farther back in the space, they placed three tall, prismatic light monitors that pierce the office tower's paved plaza, serving as sculptural features there and welcoming daylight deeper in the restaurant. Another design move was to raise the floor of the space, as found, which was too tall a volume to fit Houston's well-established concept of intimacy. Elevating the floor level by several feet had the added benefits of bringing it closer to the pedestrian level outside and simplifying accessibility ramps. The bronze of the exterior cladding was applied to some of the interior surfaces, as well, juxtaposed to the warmer textures and colors of woods and leathers. The simple, elementary geometries of the exterior give way inside to more intimately scaled configurations. The atmosphere of warmth thus produced is reinforced by the centrality of the kitchen, exposed both visually and environmentally to the patrons. The relatively limited openings into the light monitors have been enhanced visually by expanding configurations of parallelograms around them, with the natural light illuminating their wood surfaces. At the rear of the restaurant, a potential feeling of confinement is eased with a stacked brick wall surface that suggests openings beyond it. In keeping with an established practice for Houston's restaurants (now re-named Hillstone's nationwide) the owners placed a notable artwork from their extensive collection just inside the entrance: a cast bronze horse sculpture by Deborah Butterfield.
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