A Custom Installation for Plant Food + Wine

Flanked by royal palms and bamboo, The Sacred Space Miami complex is nestled into an ordered landscape plan that is an extension of the interior environment and which will now serve as an entry oasis to a new restaurant, Plant Food + Wine, led by Chef Matthew Kenney. The outdoor garden serves as an integral element, blending interior and exterior space with a series of indoor and outdoor “dining rooms.” Distinguishing the restaurant’s indoor seating area, a bamboo fl oor and ceiling will connect to two facing walls with vertical panels of the same material interspersed with refl ective bronze mirror. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows open to fully merge this space with the outdoors, extending to a café with a deck of weathered ipe wood and a talipot palm tree, the largest of its species and with the largest leaf in the plant kingdom.

In addition to helming the Plant Food + Wine restaurant, Chef Matthew Kenney will also lead an on-site cooking school, the Matthew Kenney Culinary Academy that will have as its focus instruction in the preparation of vegan, plant-based cuisine. Visually integrated with the dining area, both the main kitchen and teaching Academy will be visible through a series of glass partition windows.

In the exterior space, an elongated refl ecting pool serves as a central element and connects two additional seating areas, one featuring the regular placement of potted guava trees and a diagonally-placed custom bench and the other an outdoor lounge space with a series of palm trees connected by lights. Each of these “rooms” possesses different elements that contribute to the multi-sensory experience of this series of indoor/outdoor spaces. A pocket sanctuary hidden among the industrial surroundings of the city’s burgeoning Wynwood area, The Sacred Space Miami was conceived as a warm environment, but with the fl exibility to be transformed for a variety of uses.

Material Used :

DINING AREA:

1. Wood Floor, Ceiling, Bar – Plyboo

2. Custom Light Pendants – Stickbulb by RUX

3. Chairs – Raphia chair, Design: LucidiPevere, Manufacturer: Casamania

4. Barstools - walnut

5. Cushion Fabric – Steelcut Trio by Kvadrat for Maharam

6. Track Lighting and Fixtures – Litelab

7. Bronze Mirror – Luminous Glass Distributors

8. Marble Bar and Table Tops – Mystery White from Tuscany Stone

9. Scrim – Basket Weave gold vinyl, Manufacturer: Kova Textiles

OUTDOOR DECK:

1. Pool Tile – American Glass Mosaics

2. Dining Chairs – Teatime, Designer and Manufacturer: Paola Lenti

3. Umbrellas – Brambella

4. Planters – Urban Stoneworks

When Stickbulb launched in 2012, the objective was to “build with light.” It’s a mission that has been fulfilled in collaborations with brands like Google, Facebook and Wholefoods, as well as private commissions for clients in cities around the world. But its sleek, minimal bulbs had yet to be paired with a restaurant project.

That is, until, Stickbulb founders Russell Greenberg and Christopher Beardsley met award-winning architect Rene Gonzalez during a visit to Art Basel in Miami. The minimal, architectural qualities of the hand crafted collection in combination with the warmth of reclaimed woods and energy efficient LED’s were of immediate interest. Additionally, the custom possibilities and flexible configurations that the Stickbulb system offered made it a top consideration for a project underway.

Gonzalez had been working with entrepreneur Karla Dascal and celebrated chef Matthew Kenney to create a fine dining restaurant that also happens to be completely vegan, and they wanted the decor to match the creativity of the cuisine.

The New York based lighting manufacturer Stickbulb was charged with filling a large space in the heart of the city's Wynwood neighborhood and worked with Gonzalez to create a room-filling series of one-of-a-kind fixtures.

Following a presentation at his office, Rene Gonzalez inquired about a tailor-made version of the Sky Bang chandelier. The brief was straightforward: two large scale custom Sky Bang Chandeliers would suspend over the main dining area and a custom elongated pendant would illuminate the bar. Dascal was to launch a new kind of space in the fashionable Wynwood Arts District that encompassed food, wellness and education. An indoor/outdoor vegan restaurant catering to both casual and formal dining would serve as an anchor within the venue and required a truly unique lighting scheme.

Stickbulb sprang into action and a large scale mockup of the custom Sky Bang was developed. A 7ft bulb conjoined two Sky Bang “knuckle” components creating an overall fixture length of 15ft. Gonzalez and Dascal travelled to New York to visit the studio and sign off on the concept. The final wood of choice was sustainably sourced maple to be painted a very specific color as Gonzalez notes;

“Dining out is an experiential, sensorial experience and lighting is critical to creating the right ambience for both patrons and the presentation of food. From the outset, we wanted to find a chandelier that had an organic, branch-like quality. With Stickbulb as a partner, we developed custom chandeliers that hover over the tables like branches of a tree. In a nod to Miami and to enliven the space, we customized the lights by painting them mamey, a deep orange color, based on the Cuban mamey fruit. We worked with Stickbulb closely to achieve the finished design and the company’s production methods and materials tie in to Plant Food + Wine’s philosophy of sustainable, plant-based cuisine, making them a perfect fit for this project.”