SPACE’s Tom and Shelley Niemeier opine on restaurant design

Two decades ago, Tom Niemeier forged his own path in the field of architecture, launching SPACE as a small firm that became the go-to partner for design-conscious restaurateurs. Now, together with Shelley, his partner in life and business, the Niemeiers are preparing to take the next step in SPACE’s journey: They sold their headquarters in The Grove and are on the hunt for a larger building that meets the needs of their expansion into building and fabrication. Here, they reflect on the evolution of their firm. 

Did you always know this was your calling? 

TN: All through high school, I did not think about a career whatsoever because I was going to be a baseball player and go to college for baseball. I ended up getting injured during my senior year. I was a pitcher, and I hurt my arm throwing a curveball in the rain, so I missed the entire year. I realized that I needed to do something besides baseball. My grandfather, who worked for Anheuser-Busch, told me that if I got an electrical engineering degree, he would get me into A-B, and I’d be set for life.

And how did that go?

TN: It sounded fine, so I went to St. Louis Community College–Meramec to take electrical engineering classes. I absolutely hated them. I remember drawing threads of screws and thinking to myself, This is so dumb. There was a lot of math, too, so I went to the career center and started looking for things that didn’t require me to take advanced calculus. I remember going through their books of careers and came across architecture. I thought it sounded interesting, so I pulled it out and read through it. When I asked my mom what she thought about it, she said that it sounded like a great idea because I’d been building things my whole life. I ended up going to Kansas State with a bunch of kids who, unlike me, knew they wanted to be architects since they were 5 years old. 

Shelley, what about you?

SN: Well, I was this kid who wanted to be an architect, but I went through high school, and the math scared me off. 

TN: That’s it? Wait a minute here. Let me tell you her backstory. She’s crazy talented, and I won the lottery. When we met, I had no idea that she had any design talent. She was working for a residential interior designer and also working for the Campbell House. At the time, I was moving into a house and had to pick out furniture and colors, so I started bouncing things off her. What I quickly realized is she has a flair for design. I started asking her on more projects and getting more ideas from her. Pretty soon, I told her that she should be in the design field and talked her into it. You see all of these American Institute of Architects [plaques] we have hanging up? She’s had a part in all of them.

You do all different types of design, but you have a unique expertise in restaurants. What attracts you to that niche?

TN: The cool thing about restaurants that is different from almost any other project type is that a restaurant always should have ambiance. You want them to have some kind of quality of space to them because restaurants are everybody’s mini-vacation. Not everybody can get out of town, but they can escape the kids or their home kitchen and be served, wined, and dined. 

SN: For me, I like the pragmatic approach to restaurants. You have to balance practicality with some whimsy, and that is a fun design challenge. I think we want to give people that vacation experience, but we also don’t want our client to have problems where there are scuff marks here, furniture not holding up there, carpet that keeps staining. Our goal is to give our clients spaces that will stand the test of time aesthetically and will also hold up with time.  

Do you remember the first restaurants you worked on?

TN: I didn’t do my first restaurant for about 15 years. Leading up to it, I was doing a lot of office planning, but my first restaurant was a pizza place called Il Vicino in Clayton when I was working for another firm. I remember enjoying it because it felt different from anything I’d ever done. After that, we did Il Bel Lago, and then I went off on my own. Franco was the first SPACE restaurant. 

SN: The first project I really worked on was Three Flags Tavern. 

TN: She’s the one who had the idea for that Karl Bodmer map that was on the wall in there.

That map was the restaurant’s most iconic design element. How did you come up with that idea?

SN: Before SPACE, I was part-time assistant director at the Campbell House museum, so it was kind of perfect—maps, Karl Bodmer paintings, and framed pictures of the founders of St. Louis were right up my alley.

Backing up to Franco, you note that it was also special because it was the first restaurant you worked on that involved SPACE doing the fabrication of certain elements, in particular the ceiling. How did that happen?

TN: The space had this heavy timber and beautiful wood ceiling, but there were apartments above it, so there was all this PVC piping. We couldn’t have that, so the contractor was going to drywall the ceiling. I asked Tom Schmidt [the owner] to give me a chance to come up with something instead of drywall. He told me that if I could match the drywall budget and get something in there more interesting, he’d be all for it. That ceiling is what we came up with. I drew it up and was hoping the contractor would do it, but it was going to be 25 grand and would be cut, so we said we’d put it in for 10 grand. We didn’t even have a shop then; we built it all in the studio. That was the light bulb that went off where I thought, OK, anything interesting, innovative, or different is going to be expensive if we want a contractor to do it. If we want cool things, we’ll have to do them ourselves. 

What is the process like when working with a restaurateur on the design of their space?

TN: We always look for inspiration from—and base our design on—what the root of that restaurant is—whether that’s something on the menu or something about that particular chef. 

SN: We find what makes them unique and then pull from that. It helps that we are familiar with restaurants and restaurateurs. And we love food. 

TN: Also, it’s always function driven. We try to put that first because if a place doesn’t function, it’s not going to work. Then, pretty quickly, it turns into what kind of ambiance they are looking for. We’re always looking at what the menu is, what they are making, who they are. 

You announced that you’ve sold the building in The Grove and are looking for a new place. Why did you decide to go in this direction?

TN: After we did Franco, we started telling people we could do fabrication and custom things for them. It was when we did Bobo Noodle House for Zoë Robinson that she asked us, “If you are doing the fabrication, why don’t you manage all of it?” So then we started doing construction. We learned a lot and have evolved to the point where we’re building most of the restaurants that we design. 

SN: We have fabrication stuff all over the studio: doors, casework, host stands. It illustrated for us that we don’t have enough space for what we’re doing. So we decided to sell the building and are trying to find a spot that’s less office with more storage and construction space. 

It seems like an exciting change for SPACE. 

SN: It shouldn’t affect our clients at all; it just changes how we’re doing things internally. And we love that the business is shifting. I would guess that we build about 70 percent of what we design, which gives us incredible control to make sure the project turns out exactly how we designed it. We get to be mindful from the get-go.