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Eat, Drink and Be Social: DeVinn Bruce mixes influences from the East and West coasts in the CO-OP Food & Drink in New York.
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By Megan Krause
After opening a flurry of pop-up restaurants in New York, Alan Philips decided it was time to put down some more permanent roots. So he cut a deal with the Hotel on Rivington for its restaurant space, and hired H. DeVinn Visual to design it. It was an obvious choice for Philips: DeVinn Bruce had designed a speakeasy-themed pop-up for him in that same space.
At first, they contemplated simply redoing the space’s wallpaper. But over time and after a couple of design concepts (including a beehive motif in gold and white that was ultimately shelved), Bruce and his design partner John Rawlins settled on a theme that mixed elements of 1970s California and the hotel’s locale on New York’s Lower East Side.
The idea, Bruce says, was to create a warm, comfortable space by using lots of wood, straight lines and low furniture. “We tried to pay homage to that period without making it look retro,” explains Bruce, who started his career in retail display design and recently designed the Shops at Fontainebleau Miami Beach and Aaron Basha in New York.
Communal Dining
CO-OP revolves around the idea of a communal table, and the design carries that theme throughout the 4,200-sq.-ft. restaurant’s four distinct areas. The venue is anchored by a lounge and an intimate formal dining area, with a bar and casual eating area wedged in between.
A 30-ft. walnut dining table serves as the centerpiece of the formal dining area, which is made to look like a vintage Lower East Side smoking room, with upholstered banquette seating and dark wood walls. The owners wanted to cut the table into three pieces to make it easier to transport to the site, but Bruce insisted that it be delivered as a single slab. “We had to fight to get that done, because if you cut a communal table into pieces, it’s no longer communal,” he says.
In that same back room, Bruce erected a wall that covered three-quarters of an existing glass window wall in the 21-ft. atrium, despite the risk of losing the natural light. “The room actually became bigger and brighter,” Bruce says. “That surprised everybody.”
The new wall became the canvas for a grid of framed, oversized Polaroids* taken by photographer EJ Camp, featuring Lower East Side celebrities like Betsey Johnson and Moby, along with other faces from the neighborhood, including some store clerks and a salon owner. The 36 Polaroids were then scanned in a high-resolution format and printed—a process that took 20 hours for each shot.
Bar and Casual Areas
A 40-ft. bar inspired by a modular 1970s wall unit and covered in gold tiles anchors the bar area. The space also incorporates high banquettes and small wood tables, two of which face outward to promote shared dining by seating guests side-by-side. While owner Philips had his doubts about this seating arrangement, Bruce insisted that it would create intimacy and now notes with satisfaction that it’s “one of the hottest seats” in the house.
Gold accents in the bar and casual dining area create a smooth transition between spaces, with hand-blocked gold wallpaper, large gold lampshades and a sushi bar that mirrors the main bar.
To the right of the restaurant’s entrance, a second art installation brings the design concept full circle with a series of photo-booth portraits with colored dots covering each face. The anonymous subjects, four of which are Bruce himself, are meant to represent anyone and everyone, and a working photo booth in the basement encourages guests to pose for their own photos.
While Bruce says he is pleased with how the CO-OP Food & Drink turned out, he notes that sticking to his vision for the space also involved sticking to his guns. “A lot of times when you envision something and [the client] has never seen it before, they can’t envision it in the space,” Bruce says. “We had to fight for it, but in the end, they let us do exactly what we wanted."
*Interested in learning more about CO-OP Food & Drink's photography installations? Check out this video of celebrity photographer EJ Camp's Polaroid photo shoot.
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