“Freehouse feels like you are in a grown-up Willy Wonka factory that sells homemade brew instead of chocolate,” says Lisa Westerman Pope, design director at Gensler, and part of the team that designed the Freehouse restaurant in Minneapolis. Set in the historic Loose-Wiles building, a former biscuit factory, Freehouse takes advantage of the existing architecture to celebrate the craft of brewing beer.
The building has four distinct zones: the patio, bar, main dining room, and a private dining room. “Each space has its own unique interaction with the brewing process and therefore is named for its own distinct feel,” says Betsy Vohs, senior associate at Gensler. For example, the patio houses a silo used to store the grain for brewing and so has an organic appearance, while the bar serves as a “lab” for guests to sample different beers.
“The bar is intended to be a place where people can meet and enjoy their favorite brew,” explains Courtney Armstrong, interior designer at Gensler. Enclosed in glass, the brew tanks sit adjacent to the bar to immediately make the connection with the beer-making process. Stainless steel countertops, overhead steel shelving, wood and burlap curtains, and wood panels add to the bar’s raw, industrial character.
The dining room highlights the fermentation process and the turning of the raw ingredients into the final product. “The inspiration really came from the building itself,” Armstrong says. “It has a raw, honest quality that we wanted to capture in the interior dining spaces.” Amid the factory’s original brick walls, the color palette draws from the graphics and patterns of historic Loose-Wiles biscuit tins. A variety of upholstered chairs and booths fill the dining areas along with wooden tables.
“Conceptually the brewing was an important design driver and a complex program to achieve in a small space, but the space also needed to be a successful restaurant that was food focused and catering to a savvy neighborhood clientele,” says Vohs. “The balance between brewery as theater and the food as the focus was our greatest challenge.”
In the private dining room, diners experience the final product in a more intimate setting. In contrast to the main dining room’s exposed ceiling lit by pendants and down lights, beer casks are used for both lighting and architecture in the private space. Scattered closely together on the ceiling, the casks create a warmer aesthetic that recalls the restaurant’s focus.
In a tongue-in-cheek nod to Prohibition, a portrait of Andrew Volstead—former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota who is known as the father of Prohibition Act—is rendered in beer caps and hangs in the private dining room. “Honoring him at Freehouse, which is a place where all the public is welcome, was an appropriate homage,” says Armstrong.
