Client and program
The brief was small and specific: a neighborhood lounge that could hold a casual cocktail crowd on a Tuesday and a dedicated listening audience on a Friday, in a single room. The owner wanted a place that felt found rather than designed — somewhere with the comfort of a bar that has been there for years, on the day it opens.
Site and constraint
The space is a modest single-tenant lease bay with a low ceiling and a deep, narrow plan. The constraints were the structural ceiling height (which we couldn’t gain), the existing demising walls, and the requirement that the bar back stay along the long wall to keep service efficient.
Design move
We worked the room with two moves. First, the bar runs the long axis as a continuous element — a single uninterrupted spine that organizes everything else. Second, the ceiling is treated as an acoustic instrument, with absorption and diffusion tuned so that conversation at one banquette doesn’t bleed across the room and music played at low volume reads cleanly from any seat. The low ceiling, which would have been a liability in a bigger space, becomes the room’s intimacy.
Construction approach
Standard commercial fit-out construction with the design budget concentrated in the millwork, lighting, and ceiling treatment. The bar is the only piece that is fully bespoke; everything else is selected from production lines that read warmly under the lighting program.
Outcome
Lost Lounge is currently in design. The project is the studio’s first dedicated bar program and is the first time we’ve worked with an acoustician on a room this small — the result is a finishing palette and ceiling logic we expect to carry into other intimate venues.
