What people love about Madre, a new Mediterranean-inspired restaurant in North Carolina’s Raleigh is, yes, the food helmed by executive chef Matt Bounous, but even more than that: It doesn’t feel like it’s in North Carolina. The immersive and romantic ambiance isn’t expected of the area, much less the heavy, multi-use building it’s slotted in. Raleigh Architecture and designer Bryan Costello were challenged with turning the giant concrete box into a warm and inviting restaurant which they carried out with a transportive effect using what Costello calls a “curves-meets-grid” concept.
The clients wanted an interior that feels welcoming, lush, and romantic and that also tied to the menu’s Mediterranean roots. This is where the curves came in. The duo rounded out any wall corners, soffits, and pre-existing columns. Then, they covered it in lime-wash which local painters spent two weeks adding abstractly circular texture to by hand. Even the backs of the wooden dining chairs, edges of the tables, and wood and velvet banquettes were rounded out to continue this motif. It brings to mind the arches and curves in architecture along the Mediterranean.
“Every form in the place took on these really leading dramatic curves,” Costello told AN Interior. “And then I got obsessed with the idea of pairing those curves with grid patterns and having those two things working together. So we ended up using grids in the ceiling, grids in the breeze block, interior walls, and grids in the zellige tile.”
The dichotomy helps balance the design. “There’s heavy, curved walls that surround you, compared to these light, delicate wooden coffered ceilings and breeze blocks. I think they’re a really nice pairing between the two. Some of that came from pulling some visual inspiration from places on the Mediterranean,” explained Taylor Medlin, an architect at Raleigh Architecture. All the tile work—along the bar, columns, and scattered on certain walls—riffs on this linearity.
The bar was one of the trickiest aspects of the design to pull off. The horseshoe-shaped bar floats above the counter where it rounds out to connect to the ceiling. “The goal was so that you could connect with someone across the bar. Visually, you don’t want a lot of impediments and clutter in between people and interaction.” It’s a steel structure—that also stores and organizes all the bottles and glassware—suspended with steel gables that are bolted into concrete and then surrounded by drywall so that it appears to grow out of the ceiling.
The back of the bar continues the interiors dark mauve color scheme. The hue is brightened with unique lighting pieces, including 3D-printed wavy lamps from Brooklyn-based brand Wooj and hand-blown glass pendants by Lukas Peet.
That same rule book though is thrown at the bathrooms. The neon pink and purple LEDs make the space resemble a club more than an extension of the soft, modern Mediterranean interior from which it comes. “The idea was that this provides a break in the action. If this restaurant is lively and bumping and romantic and full on a Friday night, then you need a moment to yourself,” said Costello. The bathroom, whose arched train-car hallway resembles a tunnel of light, acts as that transporting moment. Costello continued, “To do that, we changed the rules of architecture. There are unique ceiling planes that Taylor helped me figure out in the bathrooms that are suspended ceiling planes that we could ring with a light.”
The consideration of how guests will and should use the space guides both the bathroom and bar design. It manifests in strikingly different but equally immersive ways.