Restaurant – New Construction Archives

Nami

“Nami,” meaning “wave” in Japanese, offers an extraordinary dining experience that seamlessly blends culinary artistry with dramatic design. Located within Lake Nona’s Wave Hotel, this intimate restaurant captivates guests from the moment they arrive. The atmosphere is immersive, featuring dim lighting, curated sound, and authentic materials that heighten the senses and enrich the flavors on the plate.

The design of Nami invites guests on a journey, beginning with a tranquil reception area where they are greeted by a host. They then pass through an oversized, pivoting panel that reveals the vibrant dining space, adorned with delicate gold leaf, red-grained woods, and silky Japanese Maple trees. Ethereal murals by Dean Barger provide a striking backdrop, embodying the storytelling tradition revered in Japanese culture.

This transportive design is fundamental to Nami’s success, fostering a sense of escape from reality. Every detail is crafted to evoke the feeling of being anywhere in the world. The windowless environment enhances this immersion, creating a unique atmosphere that draws affluent guests seeking an exceptional dining experience. The concurrent development of the concept and design with the client ensured a cohesive vision, resulting in a sophisticated offering that stands out in Lake Nona and Orlando’s competitive culinary landscape.

The Grand Bohemian Lodge

Nestled inside Falls Park, The Grand Bohemian Lodge offers direct access to Reedy River, while paying homage to the spirit of Greenville and the indigenous people that once lived there. The design team was inspired by time-honored reputation of national park architecture, romanticized in the era of Roosevelt and The New Deal. The design celebrates natural materials, including cedar, other hard woods, and locally sourced stone. Geodes and jade-colored accents add pops of color to the rustic, yet sophisticated interior. Guests are immersed in the history of the area, as paintings and sculptures depicting everyday Native American life are placed throughout the property. Similarly, a wall feature of stone arrowheads is found near the event space. To provide site lines to the falls and towering trees, many guestrooms were placed below the lobby level to provide instant access, while others feature terraces to provide an indoor-outdoor connection. The Grand Bohemian Lodge truly re-imagines a luxury experience and helps visitors and residents re-connect with the region’s history and natural wonders.

Rumi’s Kitchen

Located on the corner of Atlanta’s busiest intersection is a highly coveted Persian eatery. Once inside, guests are greeted by a Persian-inspired design with subtle details and references. Inspiration was drawn from whirling dervishes, Persian calligraphy, and old-world architecture. Traditional colors of red and Persian blue are used throughout to imbue the history of the cuisine. Hand-applied plaster wall finish gives the space an authentic old-world sensibility. A large, swirling chandelier made of bronze metal chain is featured in the entry, creating playful dances of light and shadow on the wall that mimic the movement of whirling dervishes.

The Garden Room

The design challenge for this project was to enclose an existing 3,000-square-foot exterior terrace to create an indoor/ outdoor extension of the luxury hotel’s existing restaurant as part of this iconic Atlanta hotel’s multimillion-dollar renovation. The desire was for the space to be used year-round with operable windows and doors to fully open during nice weather. The result is a unique, romantic conservatory space with an arched glass-and-steel enclosure, including operable sliding windows surrounding the perimeter to effectively blur the lines of an indoor/outdoor experience. The new space includes a whimsical oval bar with an artistic up lit tree anchoring the back bar. Lounge and dining seating is cleverly scattered throughout the tree cover.

The design was inspired by the hotel’s legacy of luxury, the opulence of Buckhead and Atlanta’s moniker of being a city in a forest. The Garden Room’s design marries a modern, maximalist approach, with a lush greenhouse of whimsical plants and artforms, such as two poodles made of moss, an antique wooden horse, and a glass DJ booth for late-night soirées. Everything about The Garden Room is fantastical including the abundance of florals, decorative fringe on settees, lanterns in the trees and striking colors. The result is an over-the-top experience that provides a must-see destination for locals and travelers alike.

The Summit House at Balsam Mountain

Balsam Mountain Preserve is a completely reimagined private club community in Sylva, N.C. When Balsam Mountain was developed in the early 2000s, plans called for a signature Arnold Palmer-designed course in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains, equestrian center, pool/fitness center and overall focus on conservation considering more than 3,000 of the 4,500 acres were set aside as conservation easement.

After Balsam Mountain fell into financial troubles several years ago and changed owners, the new group kept the eco-development mindset but embraced an entirely new vision for the club’s future amenities/lifestyle after consulting our firm and land planner. Indeed, rather than borrowing yet another blueprint from traditional clubhouse design, our firm conceived a contrarian clubhouse design inspired by the property’s pristine mining history roots.

The innovative end result is a cluster of connected cottages and buildings called Doubletop Village that now serves as Balsam Mountain’s new “clubhouse” facility. The buildings are arranged as rural industrial structures constructed over time and recently renovated for our purpose – all organized around outdoor spaces with striking views of the surrounding Double Top mountains and newly designed Palmer Practice Park that goes with the club’s championship layout.

Among the popular new creative clubhouse attractions are Summit House restaurant and the Mine Tavern, featuring indoor-outdoor spaces that open to a shared courtyard of natural landscape with an outdoor fireplace and regional craft beers on tap. If anything, Balsam Mountain epitomizes the future of clubhouse design, where integrated outdoor courtyards, terraces, and lawns effectively replace and become the “lobbies and corridors” of the traditional large clubhouse structures of old.

The site overlooking the practice park, golf course, and the Blue Ridge Mountains beyond gave the firm design the inspiration it needed for the clubhouse. To thoroughly enjoy the mountains, one has to appreciate the outdoors and focus on the views in tandem with the experience within.

To achieve this new sense of place, the team “blew up” the clubhouse into multiple structures, leaving an outdoor courtyard of boulders, native plants and an outdoor fireplace in place of the traditional lobby. Around this courtyard are the other club components that efficiently serve the golf functions as well as provide attractive gathering spaces for members and guess.

To further enhance the viewscapes and spaces, these elements are scaled to allow them to expand and contract by opening and closing movable glass walls to the dining porch and indoor/outdoor bar. The first building houses the Summit House restaurant with its wine cellar and tasting room, and the General Store, which functions as the pro shop.
Meanwhile, the second structure houses the Mine Tavern bar, administration, and locker rooms. Together these spaces have become the new center of energy for the club community, places where resident members can enjoy an entire day.