In the second iteration of SUD Forno, a bakery concept designed to bring people together with food served at different ‘speeds’, a monumental, wood vault becomes the unifying instrument. The lace-like, overarching structure is made of quarter-sawn solid white oak with a clear matte lacquer and class ‘A’ flame control coating. It spans and collects people from the entrance and close coffee bar, through the cafeteria style seating, altar-like “tavola calda,” and finally to the bakery and ovens captured at its end by a deep arch of mahogany.
Inserted in a 19th C. heritage building on Toronto’s historic Yonge Street, the design aims to expose the existing bones of the vintage building behind and between new installations of wood, steel, glass, and stone. SUD experiments with the classical sculpture idea of the non-finito where the exposed clay bricks, masonry pilasters and steel frames are read against the woven ceiling of solid wood boards to render a kind-of ruin where the finished layer has been eroded away; much like an unfinished wood lattice still awaiting its final layer of plaster. The large-scale wood element allows this multivalent new food concept to unfold under a highly textured overhead canopy broken only by a custom-designed light fixture that spills through the vault from the second-floor concrete ceiling. White oak is reserved for the vault whose texture is echoed by the stone mosaic floor upon which more refined millwork elements in rich mahogany are placed.