The room has two sides

Nobody comes in for the chairs

In The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton writes that “it is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value.” [1] A room people love is answering something: a long week, a hard shift, an owner who put their savings on the line to open it.

We design spaces where guests see themselves reflected, where they think “this place gets me.” That feeling is made in two places at once: at the table, and behind the counter where no guest ever looks. A guest never sees the dish station. They feel it in the glass that arrives clean and the server who still has a minute to talk.

Listen past the request

Empathy is how we hear what a room has to answer. It means listening hard enough to understand how people actually live, work and feel in a space: the guest, the staff and the owner.

Owners bring fear into a project: fear of wasting money, of a space that won’t work, of failing in public. A big part of our early work is turning that fear into clear constraints, values and design criteria, instead of pretending it isn’t in the room.

Empathy isn’t accommodation. “We need a bigger kitchen” can turn out to mean the storage is too far from the line and the layout wastes steps. Understand the need underneath the request, and the answer may be a better kitchen in the same footprint.

Draw the shift first

That’s the test we put to every line in a drawing. What does it offer the guest? What does someone have to do to make that offer real? Two places it matters most:

The bar. From a stool, a bar is a surface and a place to put your hands. From behind it, it’s a sequence: build the drink, hand it off, take the glass back. We draw that sequence first. The server pickup gets its own spot, clear of the nearest seat, so the handoff never happens in a guest’s lap, and the glass return stays on the working side. Then the guest side gets its generous edge.

The route. A plan can be read from the door to a table, or from the pass to that table and back to the dish station. Picture a guest pulling a chair back just as a server comes through with three plates. We draw both moments, and we set the service route first, so it never runs behind a chair that’s about to move.

Light works the same way. At the table it’s mood. On the floor it has jobs: reading the room, catching a signal, seeing the glass that needs clearing. Both go in the brief before a fixture is drawn.

No house style

Design matters, and good design is about a point of view. No two of our rooms look alike, and they shouldn’t: each one is built around its own guests and its own operator. We don’t produce decoration. We build a position you can walk into, with the operator’s intent legible in every detail, from the plan diagram to the seam in the millwork.

What carries from room to room is the practice. The plan does work. Materials are a decision about what the body will recognize before the mind has time to name it. And every decision gets followed from both sides, because, as I told Metropolis, “you cannot design a hospitality space if you don’t understand the physical realities.” [2]

The record

This isn’t a new pitch. In 2022, Metropolis profiled the studio’s approach in my own words: “It’s all about understanding how things actually work.” [2] The rooms have been judged the same way, by the people who run and rate them.

The Walker Inn, the 27-seat bar behind The Normandie Club in Koreatown, was ranked #37 on the World’s 50 Best Bars in 2016. [3] The Barrelhouse Flat in Chicago, designed by Patry+Kline, was a 2013 Spirited Awards finalist for Best American Cocktail Bar. [4] At Dedo Coffee in Long Beach, the owners said the interior was envisioned “in ways that we couldn’t have possibly articulated ourselves.” [5]

Those honors go to the whole place: the drinks, the service and the room, working together. That’s the argument.

Frequently asked questions

How do you design a restaurant for both guests and staff?

Follow each design decision from both sides. Ask what it gives the guest, then what someone has to do to deliver it, and resolve the places where the answers conflict.

Why does empathy matter in hospitality design?

Because a room has to answer real needs: the guest’s, the staff’s and the owner’s. Empathy is how those needs, and the owner’s fears, become clear design criteria.

Does KPHD design back of house?

Yes. Equipment design, workflow and process are part of KPHD’s design work, alongside the guest-facing spaces.

Read the other half

This article is the drawing-level companion to “An operator-first design firm,” which explains why KPHD treats front and back of house as one project. For the guest’s side alone, read “What makes a space feel like it was designed for you?”

Amaze. Elevate the spirit. Have a positive impact.