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Friday, 14 April 2006 | Levent OZLER
Durrant Designing Restaurant and Bar at New Guthrie Theater
Rolling out its new food-service design practice with a high-profile project, the Minneapolis office of The Durrant Group Inc. is designing Cue at the Guthrie, the 7,760-square-foot, street-level restaurant and bar at the new Guthrie Theater. (The Guthrie building is designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, with local architectural firm Architectural Alliance.)
Opening this summer, the new Guthrie is under construction in the historic Mill District, on the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis.
Operator of the Cue restaurant and bar will be the Minneapolis office of Bon Appétit Management Company, which joined forces with Durrant and the Minneapolis office of Landmark Restaurant Equipment & Design, kitchen design consultants, to win the project.
Known internationally for its architectural work, Durrant previously provided food-service design as an integrated element of buildings it designs. These have included large-scale banquet facilities, medium-size cafeterias and restaurants, and small themed concessions. The firm's new food-service design practice, led by interior architect Ira A. Keer, AIA, CID, will now also market and work independently from Durrant-based architecture projects.
"The food-service practice is a timely complement to our business," said Dennis Wallace, AIA, managing principal for Durrant in Minneapolis. "We've recently integrated our in-house graphic design services with the interiors studio, and restaurant clients like this seamless capability."
Durrant's interiors/graphics studio has the expertise to deliver a full range of interiors (including furniture design), architectural graphic and environmental design services, with brand-identity design development of logos, menus, Web sites and ads, essentially making it one-stop shopping for restaurant design from concept through completion. Select services also can be delivered separately.
Keer is leading the Guthrie project. Before joining the firm in 2004, he designed the Art Institute of Chicago's restaurant and bar servery and café; the marketplace serveries at Target headquarters, the University of Notre Dame and the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota; and dozens of other food-service related projects.
In addition to being an award-winning architect and interior designer, Keer is an accomplished furniture design artist. He collaborated with Bon Appétit and Landmark on the Art Institute of Chicago and Target headquarters projects. Since joining Durrant, he also has worked closely with Tim Heitman, Durrant's graphic designer, who is providing architectural graphic and environmental design services for Cue at the Guthrie.
Heitman's unusually broad range of graphic expertise spans print, Web and other digital media, signage and wayfinding. Among his clients is St. Paul's Historic Preservation Commission. He created the logo and a system of iconic street signs for each of St. Paul's five historic districts, first walking each district to discern its individual character. He also designed the 11-foot terrazzo emblem on the floor of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension building in St. Paul - drawing inspiration from a shoulder patch on a uniform.
Durrant's design for the Cue restaurant and bar has adopted the concept of simplicity, clarity and appropriateness, in harmony with the Nouvel design of the theater building.
Cue's aesthetic is sleek and dramatic - but not ultra modern. Color and design cues are taken from the building architecture, while the interior mood is about hospitality and the experience within. Distinctive elements of Cue's interior design include a 13-foot-high custom-built wine and liquor bar, and thrusting center stage into the restaurant dining room is the spectacular (blue glass tiled) Waldorf cooking island where master chefs will prepare patron meals on-exhibition, turning the art of cooking into a live performance.
With seating for 213 patrons, Cue is designed to have broad-based appeal, offering a welcoming environment appropriate for the Guthrie demographic and the Twin Cities marketplace.
About Durrant
The Durrant Group Inc., founded in 1933, is an industry leader in architecture, engineering, financing and construction management. The firm has offices in Chicago, Denver, Des Moines, Dubuque, Hilo, Honolulu, Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Phoenix, St. Louis and Tucson.
Projects of Durrant's Minneapolis office include justice centers, embassies and numerous international mixed-use and entertainment developments, as well as convention centers, hotels and museums in the U.S. and Asia. The Durrant-designed, 54-story Xi Park Tower in Ho Chi Minh City will be the tallest building in Viet Nam when completed in 2008. Another Durrant project, the 107-story Lotte II mixed-use development in Busan, South Korea, will be one of the tallest buildings in the world when completed in 2012. Last month, Durrant was announced as architect for Two Twenty Two, the latest project of the Milliken Development Group that will include nearly 300 luxury condominiums atop a 76,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market located at Hennepin and Washington in downtown Minneapolis.
Durrant: http://www.dexigner.com/directory/detail/7493/
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