Restaurant Design

Image from SHED

The James Beard Foundation recently announced its winners for best restaurant design in 2014, and the winner for large restaurants is Shed in Healdsburg, designed by San Francisco-based Jensen Architects. 

Key to the design's success is how it speaks to Shed's "Eat, Shop, Gather, Learn" ethos, in which the entire food cycle--from growing to preparing and eating--is a shared and sustainable process. This begins with an actual tool shed:

Sustainable Design

Image from SHED

A kitchen shop serves as a resource for aspiring chefs:

Modern Interior

Image from SHED

The dining room is a sustainably built, modern barn. There is a mix of small chairs and bench seating to accommodate gatherings large and small. Implementing this look of mismatched dining seating for your home would be fun and makes for a very functional ding space.

Dining Room Design

Image from SHED

Shed's combination of function and form lends a casual, unaffected warmth to the space. And it's the kind of thing you can do at home, especially if you have a great room floor plan that adjoins living and kitchen spaces. Just hang pendants over seating areas. Add barstools for casual sit-downs. And use a farmhouse table as your centerpiece.

Images: SHED