Madero Restaurant
“We’ll be surprised if you ever see a more whimsical eatery” - Vogue Living
Multi-use Commercial Space | 4,500 sf | Completed 2015 | Highway Roosevelt, Guatemala City
This café and event space draws its inspiration from commercial roadside icons. To draw the attention of passing traffic, the building exterior is conceived as a four-sided billboard: a provocative fifty-foot matte-black cube studded with colorful car chassis.
The urban highway scale of the exterior is paired with a lush, layered interior— a pastiche of technical and traditional elements. The exposed steel structure, skylights, and louvres are expressed to emphasize the building’s systems and approach to sustainability. Reclaimed rainwater is collected in bright blue tanks held along the walls, funneling water to the 15-foot palm trees that partition the open floor plan. The floor is made from a patchwork of cement tiles and recycled building material reclaimed from local exterior patios. These elements combine with custom millwork, tropical vegetation, and furnishings in a vibrant color palette to create a space that is at once familiar and refreshingly unexpected.
