As if getting to design spaces for fun clients isn’t enough, they let us trounce around largely unsupervised in the middle of the night to take pictures. Case in point, Robust Downtown at the MX. We finished this job back in December, and we’re really proud of this one. Located in the Laurel (formerly Dillard’s) on Washington Avenue downtown St. Louis, Robust is next door to the future home of the National Blues Museum. The 4,000 square foot wine bar and restaurant features a retail area, private dining room, and lobby access to the adjacent Embassy Suites Hotel.
We took our design cues from the vineyard. The entrance is enveloped by a stylized trellis that evokes the structure on which grapes are grown. The trellis continues on the upper windows around the restaurant, making a consistent visual statement. Perhaps the most dramatic element is rain. We designed, fabricated and installed “Rain,” a sculpture above the bar. Made of 2,200 strips of hanger wire that we bent and painted in our fabrication shop, we hung them over the bar with feature lighting to create a warmer, cozier space in an area with high ceilings. It also provides a visual point of interest for the entire restaurant. Click on the photos to open the gallery with captions.
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- View of the bar from the dining room.
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- The gracefully curved bar with “Rain” overhead.
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- View of “Rain” and the dining room. Washington Avenue is in the background.
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- The entry latticework. The retail area is in the background.
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- At the glassed corner of the restaurant, this dining area is at street-level, several steps down from the rest of the dining room. We enclosed this area with the stylized trelliswork. The trellis gives this area a different, more intimate vibe than the rest of the restaurant.
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- Detail of the bar.
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- Our fabrication shop when we were working on “Rain.” Everything was covered by dropcloths so we didn’t get white paint everywhere.
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- View of the retail area, entry and dining room from the cash wrap.
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- From the perspective of the poor sap who had to hang all eleventy-zillion pieces of wire from the ceiling. The wire was suspended from custom-made steel ceiling tiles with holes pre-drilled to expedite the tedious (but worth it!) hanging process.
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- The warm and cozy private dining room. The chandelier is made of empty wine bottles.
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- We custom fabricated the cash wrap/host stand next to the retail area.
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- Mid-November inside a not-quite complete Robust. The restaurant opened late December.
Visit Robust in person and have a flight. (It’s better than just a glass of wine. Trust us.)
Robust Downtown at the MX
635 Washington Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63102
314.287.6300
http://www.robustwinebar.com/visit/reservations-downtown-mx.php
(PS: Don’t fret about parking downtown. Pull up to the valet at the Embassy Suites on 7th and get your ticket validated at Robust. You’ll get your car valet parked for $3.)
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