Hospitality & Entertainment Facilities

CO-OP, Bentonville, Ark.

RETROFIT TEAM

ARCHITECT: Marlon Blackwell Architects

MATERIALS

Located in a reimagined disused food-processing plant, 8th Street Market is a community-focused food hub and part of the reinvention of downtown Bentonville into a vibrant destination for locals and visitors. For CO-OP, a fast, casual ramen restaurant, the design team used simple and unrefined materials, such as concrete masonry units and plywood, which they assembled in an unexpected composition, creating a visually arresting interior.

The view of the restaurant from the exterior storefront windows is filtered through a continuous length of steel beaded curtain, which reflects and softens the light and delays the full experience of the space until one enters. Embracing the Japanese notion of wabi-sabi, which celebrates the asymmetries and imperfections in natural and unrefined objects, Marlon Blackwell Architects used construction-quality plywood, a simple material which was elevated by employing careful joinery and edge detailing.

Highlighting the restaurant are the generously spaced booths with full-height partitions rising between them, creating a feeling of being seated inside a cave, where diners are tucked away into a private space. Passing through this compressed articulated space, guests are released into a spacious communal seating area, spatially connected beneath a deeply coffered plywood ceiling. The recessed light fixtures allow for an interplay of light and shadow across the entire space. Surrounded by carefully laid concrete block walls, softened by a 12-foot-tall living green wall, guests can watch the chefs at work in the open kitchen, creating refined versions of simple food, itself a celebration of the same spirit of wabi-sabi.

THE RETROFIT

Of the process of designing CO-OP, Meryati Blackwell, principal and director of Interiors with Marlon Blackwell Architects, says: “The design began with listening to our client, Rob Apple, the former CEO of Ropeswing Hospitality Group. He wanted to advance the idea of an Ozark ramen house, by taking the idea of Japanese ramen comfort food and adding a local Arkansas twist, such as an addition of fried chicken to the ramen bowl. It was his vision that we brought to life—an atmosphere that is welcoming, never alienating, yet sophisticated and a reflection of our local culture”.

PHOTO: Timothy Hursley