Vicia Restaurant St. Louis: Pavillion

4260 Forest Park Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri

From refining his restaurant skills at the lauded Blue Hill in New York, Chef Michael Gallina understands that the industry requires an innate ability to pivot quickly in response to challenges.

With his celebrated farm-to-table Vicia Restaurant in St. Louis facing COVID, Michael Gallina contacted SPACE and asked us to design and build an outdoor seating and bar area that suited the existing space. Priorities included providing an enjoyable experience for their diners with design that fit in with their tech-focused neighborhood while respecting social distancing protocols.

The new structure at Vicia Restaurant St. Louis needed to preserve views for indoor diners while coordinating the contemporary minimalist nature of the surrounding architecture. Splitting the adjacent sloping lot into two levels with a low retaining wall kept a natural flow of traffic and supported distinct seating areas. With the retaining wall at an obtuse angle, the new structure continued the angle for a cohesive, always-been-there feel.

We designed a simple cantilevered pavilion structure to make an expansive, uninterrupted shared space that doubled Vicia’s seating capacity once indoor dining reopened. Before then, the pavilion provided uninterrupted service when indoor dining was unavailable. A lightweight polycarbonate sheet roof allowed abundant diffused sunlight to shine inside, while a large fan created a gentle breeze for a comfortable dining experience in even the warmest St. Louis weather.

To honor Vicia’s dedication to growing much of their own produce, the design includes an intuitive watering system without traditional gutters or downspouts. Water flows onto rip rap rock, draining to an underground swale which distributes it throughout the surrounding plant beds that utilize corten steel. This material exists throughout the district, making Vicia’s pavilion feel like and intentional part of the neighborhood. Uplighting positioned in the landscape beds reflects off the polycarbonate to provide visually clean ambient lighting at night, supplemented by tabletop lighting and playful reed-shaped landscaping lights to drive home Vicia’s plant-forward ethos.