This Houston Eatery Offers An Urban Cabin Aesthetic

A garage and fine dining. Swiss chalets and Japanese ryokans. City and mountain. Thanks to Schaum Architects, these seemingly disparate elements tastefully collaborate to yield Camaraderie, chef Shawn Gawle’s new Houston eatery, its name and ethos inspired by the friendship bonds between members of strong restaurant teams. “Shawn sought informality and refinement, warmth and connection but also sophistication, so an ‘urban cabin’ logic drove our concept,” explains principal Troy Schaum, whose studio explored a similar tension for the restoration of Donald Judd’s Architecture Office, which opened last month in Marfa.

For Camaraderie, an early 1990’s structure formerly used as a metal workshop provided the ideal setting, its exterior presenting as modest but its skylit vaulted ceiling inside dramatic. Reusing nearly all the existing wood framing and metal wall paneling, Schaum modernized the 2,200-square-foot interior by installing an envelope of birch paneling on the walls and ducts concealing HVAC and uplighting systems, rebuilding the skylights, and retaining, polishing, and sealing the concrete floor slab. Dining room seating and tables are clean-lined and unpretentious, but the cosmopolitan factor ups in the bar and lounge, where white modular suspension lamps by Jaume Ramírez pop against a swath of cobalt from Camaraderie’s branding that’s akin to Yves Klein Blue. The color’s first introduced on the facade, flanking the wide and welcoming entrance.