Design of the Year
Prestigious Partners
At Bar Prima, Toronto’s Futurestudio design team serves up a nostalgic throwback to old-school Italian glam.
Make a wish. You’re about to step inside a genie’s lamp. Through a puce-coloured door on Queen Street West, Bar Prima’s opulent amber interior seems to materialize with a poof. The ceiling sets the scene. Like the inside of a lamp’s belly, it curves and glows gold. The genie? Ali McQuaid Mitchell, creative director of Toronto-based design firm Futurestudio.
While designed by the “future” in name, the 75-seat restaurant is a nostalgic homage to the past, with old-school craftsmanship on full display. The gilded ceiling, applied leaf by leaf by professional gilder Andrzej Kisza over a two-week span. Straight out of a 1968 Vogue spread set in American abstract expressionist Cy Twombly’s Roman apartment, inlaid marble floors by Deco-Tile ground the dining room with a harlequin cream, veined maroon and black pattern.
“Valentino used the apartment to show his spring collection that year, so the article profiled the fashion show,” explains McQuaid Mitchell. “I had the image pinned up on our studio wall for a few years waiting for the right project to integrate the idea. When Bar Prima came along, it was the perfect fit.”
Pull back the carmine velvet curtains, hand-sewn by couture furnisher Studio La Beauté, and follow the leopard print stairs to the Club Room. Down here, oxblood replaces the ultramarine Yves Klein blue found on the upstairs banquettes and bar stools. Persian rugs cover the square-tiled floors and mirrors are encased in ornate frames.
The timeless effect is polished right down to the logos by Biography Design – spotted at the front door, on lapel pins, menus and matchboxes. No fewer than 16 wordmarks were developed to imagine a decades-long brand evolution for the brand new, old-time restaurant.
Top to bottom, Bar Prima is a rare brand of glam. Brava.
Prestigious Partners
