Survey

The experience of dining in a post-pandemic world raises questions about more than just adaptability. We surveyed people to understand their preferences and fears so we could rethink the restaurant ecosystem and design solutions that best address their pain points.

The design serves an indoor fine dining restaurant. Due to the pandemic, fine dining businesses have suffered significant losses as they struggle to serve the same level of hospitality and comfort while also ensuring the safety of their customers. Since these spaces are a typology where users spend a significant amount of time outside their homes, we wanted to understand the apprehensions of dining out and address these concerns so as to better equip restaurants to regain their customers’ trust

Since New York City saw one of the worst peaks of the pandemic, we chose to address the challenges faced by restaurants there. Looking at solutions adopted by restaurants since their reopening, there has been a range of quick, on-the-feet thinking in the hospitality sector. At first, the focus was on outdoor seating and ways to maximize capacity, while also maintaining  a certain quality of design. Now, we are starting to see how restaurants are thinking about their indoor spaces as regulations ease up. We identified some pain points that restaurants are currently facing to inform the goals of our design: 

• On-the-feet thinking has led to many temporary solutions, especially as regulations have pushed and pulled, and will continue to fluctuate as we slowly make our way to a new normal.

• The design of the space has become less important. Rather, the functionality and flexibility of space is taking higher priority as profitability becomes a growing concern.

• Reported by The NY Times, the threat of COVID-19 is still an increased risk indoors with the loosening of restrictions. Design and preparedness have never been more important for restaurants to be able to survive and continue to thrive.

• Circulation and wayfinding have become more important post-COVID. Designing for varying levels of capacity raises the challenge of making sure people follow paths in an efficient manner.

• Restaurants need to be prepared to deal with constant changes in COVID-19 regulations so that transition between different capacities is easy and aided by the design of the space.

• Gaining the trust of the customer is one of the biggest pain points all owners face. Preparedness and transparency of operations are key.

Given that the past year has seen an emergence and re-emergence of COVID-19 globally, we imagine the near future to continue seeing multiple resurgences of the virus such that social interaction will evolve to adapt to a new normal of expanded personal boundaries and physical distance. In addition, the periodic tightening and easing of COVID-19 regulations calls for indoor dining spaces to be flexible in their accommodation and transparent in their operations.

Screen Design and Application

The challenge of making a space adaptive calls for modularity. Hence, we designed a module of expandable, multi-layered, translucent screens to function as a partition and physical demarcation of the required distance between dining groups, as well as, to serve as a design feature within the restaurant. The translucency of acrylic panels provides a sufficient level of privacy and they can be flexed, along a ceiling-mounted track, to accommodate the varying distance requirements, upto a maximum of six feet (the most stringent requirement in NYC). Indoor circulation is also informed by the positioning of these modules as they encourage people to use the way-finding aisles to navigate through the space.

We imagine these panels to be customizable so as to be compatible with the restaurants’ original design and character.

Proposed Solutions

Our goal is to be able to retain the social aspect of dining in a public space and maintain the restaurant’s ambience and quality of hospitality, while providing more flexibility and transparency in their typical operations. To achieve this, the seating arrangement and circulation have been reconfigured so as to adhere to social distancing guidelines and varying restrictions to capacity that are imposed. Additionally, to address the increase in pick-up and delivery from restaurants, the design attempts to streamline this service by designating a portion of the space to this operation near the entrance.