Dramatic vision Boutique design firm heating up Winnipeg’s hospitality scene Behind the Scenes
By: Eva Wasney Posted: 6:16 PM CDT Friday, Oct. 11, 2024

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This article was published 11/10/2024 (704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The labour happens out-of-sight, behind papered windows brimming with anticipation.

But the work is on full display.

Jaclyn Wiebe and Adam Bumbolo are the co-founders of Fireside Design Build, a boutique interior design and renovation firm responsible for making bold esthetics a growing focal point of Winnipeg’s hospitality scene.

While the studio does a mix of residential and commercial work, a fascination with restaurants started while designing the cosy alcoves and moody decor of Harth Mozza & Wine Bar in 2017.

Or, realistically, even earlier.

“We like to eat,” Wiebe says with a laugh.

Fireside’s portfolio has since grown to include the ambitious umbrella and rain rooms of Nonsuch Brewing Co.; the luxe, feminine lounge of Rosé Coffee & Wine; and the dramatic two-tiered dining room of Parcel Pizza, among other buzzy, visually-striking local eateries.

And there’s more on the way.

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Fireside’s office is located on Cumberland Avenue in a historic building occupied by arts organizations. The company employs eight staff members and the workspace is a mix of form and function, storage and staging space.

Clients are greeted by a library stacked with interior design tomes and hosted in a chic boardroom. There’s a woodworking shop across the hall and antique furniture awaiting use in future projects tucked into every available nook and cranny. Collections of fabric swatches and finishing samples line a long shelf next to a bank of windows.

“It’s important to see it in natural light and artificial light,” Wiebe says of the materials.

“We need to see how the colours and textures work.”

Sporting a permanent tuxedo, office cat Tony Duquette (pronounced like “du-cat” and inspired by the famed American maximalist designer of the same name) provides moral support by way of headbutts and purr breaks.

Wiebe is an interior designer with experience in project management and Bumbolo has a background in construction and filmmaking. The business partners crossed paths on a jobsite in 2012 and quickly found they spoke the same professional language.

They opened Fireside three months later with lofty plans to revamp the relationship between tradespeople and designers.

“Often in the industry it’s adversarial. Designers don’t like dealing with builders, builders don’t like dealing with designers and the (client) is stuck in the middle,” Bumbolo says

The solution, it seemed, was to do it all in-house.

On top of planning layouts and picking finishes, Fireside often acts as a general contractor, co-ordinating everything from the construction workflow to graphic design in order to ensure a cohesive look between the decor, menu and marketing material.

The company has even helped restaurateurs find the right space for their concept.

“We handle everything — partly because we’re creative control freaks and because we’re committed to the vision. If you don’t understand construction, you don’t know how to push the design as far as possible,” Wiebe says

“So you either have an idea that’s so out there it’s not affordable or doable, or you have the most phoned-in, safe thing ever.”

Safe is not part of the vocabulary at Fireside.

After more than a decade of creating spaces for a variety of clients — from doctor’s offices to glasses shops — the studio has settled into a niche: restaurants and home kitchens.

It’s a specialization driven by interest in building communal living spaces and welcoming third places.

“Sociology and psychology have a big role for us in design. You want to make people feel more comfortable,” Bumbolo says.

In restaurants and bars, comfort begins at the front door with what Bumbolo calls “the choreography of approach.”

Whenever possible, the designers include a threshold that opens into the wider establishment, giving patrons a sense of protection when coming in off the street.

Inside, attention is paid to “curated views” of decor elements as well as the demographics of diners.

At Rosé, where Vaudeville was a driving force of the design brief, that meant including purse hooks under tables and scaling down the furniture to appeal to female patrons. (Last year, the lounge was listed as having the best atmosphere in the city in a MacLean’s Magazine roundup of Winnipeg hotspots.)

At Baby Baby, a forthcoming Osborne Village restaurant, it’s been about finding a balance between customers who want to be seen and those who would rather blend into their surroundings — a category of clientele dubbed “anxious diners.”

“You still want to be out and about and you want to be in that energetic setting, you just don’t want to be the focal point,” Bumbolo explains.

To serve both ends of the spectrum, Fireside has added snug, private booths to the floorplan, which takes inspiration from a well-worn pub.

Other clients in-progress include Select Start, a new arcade bar coming to the Exchange District, and the soon-to-be-revamped restaurant at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Lighting and acoustics have been a top priority in both projects.

“It’s our bread and butter. Lighting is everything. Acoustics are so important,” Wiebe says.

The designers employ soft furniture and drapery to dampen the din of a busy room and use photometrics (a branch of interior design concerned with the science and art of lighting) to set the mood of a space.

Back-of-house areas — such as server stations, bars and kitchens — also get due consideration.

While the dining public likely won’t notice the specific degrees of Kelvin of a wall sconce or the structural engineering that went into a feature wall, Fireside’s esthetic sensibilities are intentionally impossible to ignore.

Wiebe and Bumbolo dance around labels such as maximalism, but admit their studio leans towards big, bold design.

“We prefer, ourselves, spaces that are layered and textured and cosy. We’re not trying to design to trends though, we want to make things timeless,” Wiebe says.

Still, it can be hard to convince clients that show-stopping decor — occasionally, in exchange for precious table space — is an important, even integral part of the dining experience.

“It’s a little bit of a risk because commercial spaces are very much based on profit and seats — how many people can we cram in and how many times can we turn over the dining room?” Bumbolo says.

“It’s not about us, we’re the arbiters of the design and of good taste, but also often we’re the defenders of the vision.”

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @evawasney