Odami
Odami
Odami
Odami
Odami
Odami
Odami
Odami
Odami
Odami
Odami
Odami
Odami
The founders of rising Toronto firm Odami hail from different cultural and design backgrounds: Michael Fohring was born and raised in Canada, while Aránzazu González Bernardo studied architecture in her native Spain. This duality has become the foundation of their work together — and their secret weapon. “By acknowledging different modes and perspectives and purposely working in between them — between Canadian and Spanish, physical and digital, functional and expressive, traditional and unfamiliar — we’re in search of a fertile meeting ground,” say the designers, “one where something new can flourish.”
In its very first project, Sara Restaurant, the firm designed everything from the architecture to the furniture. Opening up the Victorian townhouse, they removed and re-framed the floors to form an intimate, vaulted main-level dining room. Its curved wall, clad in a custom plaster made of upcycled waste additives, lends the space a cozy and cavernous character, and the organically shaped tables nestle into each other like curvilinear puzzle pieces. At Aesop Yorkville, another of the firm’s seminal works, the singular defining move is wainscotting born from an unlikely material — wooden balusters left over from a local turner’s workshop. Bathed in a moody oxblood red (a nod to the red banquettes of Yorkville’s ’60s-era Riverboat Coffee House), the spindles lend the interior a musical rhythm. Another Aesop location, a mint green–washed sanctuary in Los Angeles, shows the firm expanding beyond Toronto.
For Odami, sustainability — both environmental and social — is the default, though it’s often realized in scrappy and inventive ways. Always unexpected but never gimmicky, the studio’s work boasts a distinct point of view and a maturity well beyond its years.
Team: Michael Fohring and Aránzazu González Bernardo
Always unexpected but never gimmicky, the studio’s work boasts a distinct point of view and a maturity well beyond its years.
