Protz Studio recently completed Chez Tex, a husband-and-wife owned restaurant that invites in the neighborhood to share food and drink. From Venice to Venice Beach: this project brings detail, materiality, and surprise to a challenging 1921 manufacturing shell to create a provocative atmosphere for dining and gathering.
Seeking to benefit from the beach climate and create day/night flexibility, the boundary between street and interior is thickened into a chance place to enjoy waiting and host additional seating for events. An accessible ramp is seamlessly incorporated into the experience here along with massive floor-to-ceiling steel and glass folding doors to allow the space to breathe and light and ocean breezes in. An unusually clean, hovering ceiling neatly disguises lighting and mechanical services, and its polished Venetian plaster finish bounces light deep into the space, thereby enlarging the sense of volume. The dining space preserves a palette of brick, steel, wood, and concrete original to the space, and adds compatible elements in the form of a concrete bar and curb with wood seating, wood shelving, and tables of wood on steel legs.
A thin window in the cold-rolled steel-clad kitchen volume offers a peek of the chef and staff, but the most unexpected moment is at the very back. Each bathroom is a flourish of vibrant color: cove-lit white, blue, and yellow ombre tiled walls immerse one in emergent patterns. Designed, hand-painted and fired by Protz Studio, the ceramic tile installations are completely unique to the restaurant. Composed of singular tiles, the overall pattern was left to the discretion of the installer following a few simple rules of orientation and adjacency. The subtle white-on-white stencil along the wall of the dining space follows this concept as well, its pattern a play on drywall mud strokes. It is with a small number of elements and nod to tradition that this project devises compelling effects to infuse an architecture of the everyday with wonder.
