Before Kevin Albaugh, senior associate at Alameda, California-based MBH Architects even lifted a pencil to begin his initial foray into completing the architecture for Earls Kitchen + Bar—a Vancouver-based upscale casual chain that started as a father-son burger joint—he traveled to check out a few of its existing U.S. outlets. “Each one looked different,” he says, “and that’s continued with the ones we’ve worked on.”
Still, the company does have several broad brand standards, which for this 280-seat space recently opened in Tysons Corner, Virginia (MBH has also completed architecture for Earls’ Chicago and its Orlando location, which is set to debut this summer), the Earls in-house design team realized by emphasizing an indoor-outdoor conceit, with materials like concrete, wood, and steel, and drawing inspiration from a central piece of artwork.
The team was gifted with a blank slate as the building that houses the 10,000-square-foot restaurant acts as a glass base for the new residential tower that rises above it. The pavilion-like addition offers plenty of windows and room for a generous patio that slopes to an above-grade point, but it also presented challenges. “Since the apartments start immediately above us, we didn’t really have a roof,” Albaugh says. “We had to be creative about burying the HVAC, and that drove some of the mapping and spatial arrangements.”
To ensure flow, the design team crafted a wood trellis ceiling that meanders through parts of the interior and extends to the outside. Lighting, too, plays an important role overhead, most noticeably in a chandelier that’s fashioned from an aluminum assembly of LED lights and suspended from a recessed wood ceiling above the main dining room—a brand signature, says Albaugh. And because custom furniture and lighting are key elements of Earls’ patios, adds the in-house team’s senior designer and project lead Jennifer Hoffbeck, “it was important to create different guest experiences by carefully selecting groupings of furniture, lighting, and finishes” for the Tysons Corner outpost.
Another Earls signature is a dominant wall hanging by Vancouver-based Ricky Alvarez; each takes inspiration from its location. In this case, Alvarez has installed a pewter piece that nods to the distinctive street plan of nearby Washington, DC.
The restaurant is divided into several rooms with a mélange of marble- and wood-topped tables and upholstered and leather chairs in gray tones, with a smattering of marine-hued pieces tossed in. The materials “lend a human scale to what is a very large, mainly industrial-feeling space,” says Albaugh. “There’s a lot of tufting, piping, and buttons, and the way they’re mixed and matched reinforces a sense of the area that you’re in—whether it’s the main dining room or the more intimate wine bar.”
