Helmed by owner Billy Van Dolsen, Sereneco is a warm and relaxed neighborhood restaurant located on the ground floor of Greenpoint, Brooklyn's historic Pencil Factory building.
Our design agenda was to create a space that makes people feel great, but ultimately talk about the food more than the design.
As a studio, we like to work very intuitively and I think we achieved a space that feels like a reflection of Billy himself; incredibly thoughtful, yet understated. We didn't even know that Billy was a Sommelier until reading his press kit and that perfectly sums up his personality.
We designed this space shortly after the quarantine lockdown ended and the importance of our relationship with the outside world was playing heavily in our minds. We started looking into local architecture that prioritizes the relationship between architecture and the natural environment and Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian community immediately came to mind. These are residential projects built in the mid-century so some concepts just don't transfer easily to a commercial restaurant's requirements, but we used our research to establish our design priorities: a fluid relationship between exterior and interior, use of natural materials and importance of light + texture.
For this particular project, we wanted to keep the material palette soft and natural with wood, plasters, terra cotta, stone and the existing brick. Another key material is the greenery throughout; we worked with Greenery NYC to fill the space and the plants are thriving with all of the natural light.
We thought of the bar as the center of the restaurant and treated it as a "hearth" by completely opening the facade behind and creating a tall central volume with large wood-clad planters wrapping both.We specifically placed the kitchen under one of the two existing skylights in the space with the idea that natural light isn't just for the guests and that the well being of the kitchen staff should be considered as much of a priority as the well being of the guests.
What was the brief?
Our Client, Billy Van Dolsen (who was a dream to work with) had descriptions for how he wanted the space to feel, but without specific ideas or set limitations. As a design studio, this is our favorite way to work since it allows us to influence the overall design concept. As both the architect and designer on most projects, our work starts first and therefore tends to reverberate through the entire project.
Billy was originally looking at a different space in Manhattan - our design kick off meeting for that location was March 9, 2020 so we all had to pivot shortly thereafter - the Manhattan space and location would have resulted in a completely different design concept. We took a lot of cues for Sereneco from the existing raw space and the Greenpoint location.
Team:
Architects: Carpenter & Mason
Photographer: Nicole Franzen
