Cass Calder Smith’s varied design background manifests in restaurants defined by strong concepts and inventive detail. Here, the principal and CEO of his namesake CCS Architects discusses his bicoastal upbringing, his passion for carpentry, and the most creative commission imaginable.
Did you always know you wanted to be a designer?
Yes, ever since high school I knew that was what I wanted to do.
What are some of your first memories of design?
Designing and building furniture for my room from salvaged lumber, back in high school. Also designing a house in architecture classes we had in high school—it was a public school in California that had an alternative to shop classes with a great teacher.
Did where you grew up influence your career path?
Yes, very much. Growing up, half the time I was in New York City with my father who was a journalist and into the creative scene of the ’60s and the ’70s. The other half was in Northern California where we lived off the grid in a commune on the site of a former lumber mill. There was lots to build with and many people doing just that. Between, we spent a year in Rockland County, New York, living in an alternative community of artists, many of whom had gone to the Black Mountain [School] and built unique, experimental houses. We lived in one.
Give us a bit of your background: college, first jobs, early lessons learned?
I went to [University of California, Berkeley] architecture for undergraduate and graduate school [in architecture]. I put myself through college working in carpentry and then started dabbling in design-build for small residential projects. By the time I graduated, I had plenty of clients so I never went to work for another firm. It just grew from there. I designed a large restaurant in San Francisco in 1993 when I was 29. It was a smash hit and really launched me as an architect. Early lessons learned: to listen to clients and keep my ego out of the projects as much as I could.
Can you discuss some of your recent projects?
We just finished the renovation of the Park South Hotel in New York, including two restaurants, O Ya and Covina, both of which we designed. In San Francisco, we just finished Volta, which is turning into quite a destination. In a few months we will complete four more restaurants in the new Andaz in Mayakoba, Mexico. And we’re also have a nice lineup of residential projects in the Hamptons, Northern California, and Illinois.
Is there a challenging project that you are especially proud of?
They are all quite challenging. I still really like the Tesla Motors showroom we did in Los Angeles a few years ago.
What do you find are the most challenging and exciting aspects of your job?
It’s a lot of work to run a company from the business perspective and the challenges never subside. One has to constantly balance that with the creative side, which works great when my partners and I have enough energy to stay in the creative mode. Coming up with ideas to solve a design problem that we haven’t seen before is exciting, even more so when our clients approve them. I really like seeing the work get built, it’s the creative payoff.
What is the most important thing to remember when designing a restaurant—both in terms of branding and interiors?
One really needs to have a strong concept that leads the design and is based on what the intended experience is going to be. A strong concept will establish or support the brand, and then it will inform the architecture and the interiors. In my own way, I also like to think of restaurants as public places for social interaction.
Is there an architect or designer you most admire? Why?
Today I really admire what Rem Koolhaas is doing. He thinks about architecture differently than most. I went to the Venice Architecture Biennale [that] he directed and found it very interesting.
What would be your dream project and why?
A museum. It would be wonderful to design a building of such cultural magnitude. My sense is that a museum is probably the most creative type of commission.
If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?
Le Corbusier.
Where would you eat and what would you be having?
South of France, oysters. Or California, guacamole.
If you weren’t a designer, what would you be?
Mathematician.
