Tuesday, February 9, 1999
UCLA alumnus could not have blueprinted successful career
ALUMNA: Restaurant designer leaves unique mark on themed
eateries
By Sharon Hori
Daily Bruin Contributor
When Stephen Francis Jones met with a client to discuss a new
Japanese restaurant, the UCLA-educated architect knew the job would
require more than just paper lanterns and fish tanks.
"He didn’t want a traditional sushi bar," Jones, an architect at
the forefront of restaurant design, says of his first meeting with
businessman Brian Vidor.
But creativity is Jones’ forte, especially when it comes to
designing the specialized atmosphere of themed restaurants.
Jones, a 37-year-old alumnus of the UCLA College of
Architecture, is the designer of such Southern California
highlights as Spago Beverly Hills, the Pan-Asian restaurant Typhoon
and Los Angeles’ trendy Barfly.
"Restaurants are my bread and butter," said Jones. "They are the
most challenging because they are complex in dealing with kitchen
equipment and creating a beautiful setting."
Restaurant designs must flow well so that service can be
efficient and organized, without the interference of electrical or
mechanical devices and service stations. The atmosphere must
provide comfort for the customers and artistic ingredients that
blend into a recipe of aesthetics.
For The Hump restaurant and sushi bar, located at the Santa
Monica Airport, Jones created the propellers and pebble stone
floors to reinforce businessman Brian Vidor’s ideas.
"Whenever clients come to me with a particular idea, they have
certain visions in their minds as to what they think the space
should look like," Jones, a Manhattan Beach resident, says. "The
Hump does not look traditionally Japanese."
The Hump is the aviation term for the Himalaya Mountains,
through which China received supplies from India after the Japanese
cut off trade routes during World War II. Once a pilot cleared the
dangerous, snowy peaks, he was more or less home free.
At The Hump, airplane propeller fans decorate a ceiling of
mahogany, bamboo and sea grass. Teak and leather chairs sit on the
pebble stone floor. The restaurant, overlooking the airport’s main
runway, does not appear to be Japanese, but instead like a
Himalayan outpost – a breezy twist on the traditional sushi
bar.
Jones had no mountainous obstacles to overcome in his early
years, when his dream of pursuing architecture was beginning to
take flight.
The son of a silk screen printer and the nephew of an engineer,
Jones has been around the technicalities of the art world since he
wandered among the tables of his uncle’s drafting room.
A whiz kid in mathematics who also excelled in his high school
drafting class, Jones said that his superior achievement in
mathematics-based courses directed him to begin undergraduate work
at the University of Florida and pursue a career in
architecture.
"Drafting was an easy A course, and we all know that you’ve got
to keep up that GPA," chuckled Jones.
But Jones’ inspirations do not completely rise from mathematical
and architectural aesthetics – or easy A classes.
The architect’s works are combinations of his clients’ requests
and his touch of creativity.
"I like to keep a mental library of ideas," said Jones.
"Sometimes the clients come to me and show me a material that they
really fall in love with so I find a way of using that
material."
He is currently designing Buzz, a restaurant and sports bar
combination in Newport Beach, and La Maison Du Cigars, a flagship
store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
Recently, he finished designing David Paul’s Diamond Head Grill
in Honolulu.
"A lot of places you see in Hawaii are typical of restaurants,"
said Jones. "It’s almost like they use a formula, with floral
prints and wicker chairs repeated over and over. The restaurant had
to be sophisticated, so I used elements that are very Hawaiian, but
not in the typical way."
Diamond Head Grill, with its combination of traditional
materials like mahogany paneling and marble bar tops mixed with
sun-patterned carpeting, also features a 13-seat appetizer bar, a
chef’s room, a serpentine martini bar and glass walls.
But Spago in Beverly Hills remains his greatest source of pride,
requiring nine months from its July 1996 proposal to its April 1997
completion.
Jones received the Spago assignment as a commission from his
collaboration with the Wolfgang Puck Food Company, by which he was
hired as an in-house architect and designer for a number of
Wolfgang Puck cafes, including those in Beverly Hills and El
Segundo.
Working with restaurateur Barbara Lazaroff, wife and business
partner of famed chef Wolfgang Puck, Jones designed the restaurant
with a 10-foot-high entryway, two 100-year-old olive trees and an
8-foot-high fountain. Jones also designed Puck’s Chinois at Las
Vegas’ Caesar’s Palace Hotel. He left his job with Puck to form
S.F. Jones Architects in July of 1996.
Future projects include homes in Malibu, a sushi bar in Westwood
and a resort in the Bahamas.
Although his career has advanced past the stages of his UCLA
education, Jones returns every morning to go rowing at the UCLA
Aquatic Center. Among his favorite buildings is Perloff Hall in
north campus. Lu Valle Commons was his favorite coffee-break
hangout as a student.
"I love going back to the campus to see the places where I used
to live and to visit the administrators who helped me a lot," Jones
says.
While he credits professors like world renowned architectural
historian Charles Jencks for his spark of inspiration, Jones has
left his own blueprints on the gourmet landscape of Los
Angeles.DAVID HILL
Stephen Francis Jones sits at a counter he designed for the The
Hump restaurant at the Santa Monica Airport.
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