WDA’s work for KAIYŌ Rooftop, located atop a 12-story hotel in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood, realizes a visionary client’s desire to create a destination rooftop oasis amidst the urban landscape. Restaurateur John Park wanted the interior design to echo the inventive Japanese-Peruvian menu.
Project Name: KAIYŌ Rooftop
Studio Name: William Duff Architects (WDA)
Design Team: Jonathan Tsurui (Associate Principal and Hospitality Practice Leader); Chris Telles (Project Manager): Parvathy Nair (Job Captain); Dillon Parker (Sr. Technical Architect); Scott Hunter (Designer)
Area: 2,900 SF
Year: 2022
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
Consultants: ROY Hospitality (interior designer); DCI (structural engineer); ACIES Engineering (MEP engineers); Modern Metal Designs (custom metal designs and fabrication); Sixteen5hundred (lighting)
Photography Credits: Patrik Argast
Other Credits: Client – John Park
The visitor experience begins on the street-level elevator lobby entrance enveloped by a hand-painted mural. On the rooftop, a steel-framed, open-air pergola structure with an Ipe wood ceiling houses the bar. The bar features a luminescent quartzite top over a vibrant green base composed of handmade tile. Completing the tropical look are woven light pendants and framing the back bar’s wood shelving is a custom metal screen designed with Modern Metal Designs, whose abstract pattern is a subtle nod to the KAIYŌ logo.
Elsewhere, the seating options are varied and flexible, and include built-banquettes. The tropical ambience is enhanced by nature-inspired, drought-friendly features such as a manufactured green wall. These richly textured design elements create a cross-cultural vibe that feels at once appealingly familiar, and intriguingly exotic.
The project’s technically challenging parameters notwithstanding, the resulting fusion of cuisine, design and architecture is an aesthetically well considered journey into another world.
