Lawrence Group’s Hospitality practice completed its second Basso restaurant in the St. Louis area. Opened on May 27 at Westport Plaza in Maryland Heights, Missouri, the new Basso on the Plaza is the sister restaurant to Basso at The Cheshire that opened in late 2012 at the historic Cheshire Hotel in St. Louis City.
Both restaurants are owned by Lodging Hospitality Management.
The first Basso was designed as a dynamic space, intended to live outside typical hospitality trend cycles. Nestled in a historic basement within a highly themed hotel, the interior needed to be inviting, intuitive, and truly memorable. Lawrence Group’s designers leaned into the natural texture of the architecture to achieve these core goals, layering in lighting to create a subterranean warmth while curating authentic materials to create a sense of understated luxury.
Basso at The Chesire further balances the intimate ambiance through highly functional design considerations such as clear sightlines for staff, private dining opportunities, and efficient kitchen adjacencies. The result is a space that resonates deeply with guests and works smoothly for operators, perfectly tailored to embrace the unique atmosphere of the Chesire Hotel.
The second location, Basso on the Plaza occupies a 6,000-sq-ft space at the north end of Westport Plaza in the former Nino’s restaurant which closed in 2009. Providing architecture, interior, and graphic design on the renovation project, Lawrence Group designers opted not to carbon-copy the flagship Basso but rather emphasize the brand’s sophisticated dining experience in the restaurant’s second location.
Basso on the Plaza was fundamentally different from the naturally moody space offered at the Chesire; located at the edge of the recently redeveloped courtyard at Westport Plaza, the new space is on the street level of a bustling, mixed-use development with constant exposure to natural light. The restaurant would inherently be connected to the outdoor entertainment space through its storefront windows, offering generous views of the surrounding plaza and to frequent, large gatherings in the courtyard for sporting events and live music.
By experimenting with different design concepts, the Lawrence Group team determined the color palette would need to be lightened and refreshed to better pair with the more modern surroundings of Westport Plaza. The dark, heavy wood tones from the Cheshire space were swapped for more modern, medium tones with simplified profiles, while the saturated warm colors in the palette were similarly neutralized into lighter, neutral tones. A deep field color helped to absorb the light streaming through the new storefront windows, offering a more consistent feeling throughout the day while retaining the moody ambiance central to the Basso concept.
