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Future chefs cook in a state-of-the-art buildin
Johnson & Wales building offers everything future chefs need
By Jane Dornbusch
| Globe Correspondent
February 22, 2012
PROVIDENCE - When Johnson & Wales University
undertook to build a new culinary facility to replace its outmoded student
kitchens and labs, the school’s president had one request. “He wanted a ‘wow’
building,’’ recalls Nicholas Koulbanis, of the architecture firm Tsoi/Kobus
& Associates, of Cambridge.
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Students at class in the new Cuisinart
Center for Culinary Excellence at Johnson & Wales University
in Providence.
And that is what Johnson & Wales got. The new 82,000-square-foot
Cuisinart Center for Culinary Excellence is state-of-the-art, with, among other
things, 30 teaching labs and classrooms, seven pastry and chocolate labs, three
dining rooms, two bake shops, and a microbrewery lab. The levels are themed and
color-coded, light floods in through huge windows, and graphics feature
oversize words such as “culinary,’’ “create,’’ and “leaders’’ visible from
outside the building. Level two, for instance, has as its theme “The Art of
Cuisine and Wellness,’’ with marine blues and lime greens; one floor up, the
theme is “International Baking and Pastry,’’ reflected in shades of gold and
wheat. The themes even carry through to the tiles in the restrooms on each
level.
The LEED-certified building was designed with energy efficiency and
sustainability in mind, and all this in a structure that required a 12-foot
elevation because it sits on a flood plain.
Student and faculty reviews of the building, which opened last fall, have been
uniformly positive. “It’s a fantastic new facility,’’ says pastry instructor
Susan Lagille, as she doles out tiny baby coconuts to students to use as cake
decorations. Says sophomore Bethany Ross, who hopes to design wedding cakes one
day, “It’s lots better than Friedman’’ - the dark, dated, and now-closed David
Friedman Center that formerly housed kitchens and labs.
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The building, designed by a Cambridge
firm, has bright, open stairways between levels.
If instructors see any downside, it’s that the new building is almost too
nice. “The one negative is that when they get bored, they tend to look out the
windows,’’ says chef David Petrone, as he leads students through a class in
identifying exotic produce. The budding chefs scribble notes as they peer at
the array of rambutans, watermelon radishes, and purple potatoes. But Petrone’s
not really complaining: “[The Cuisinart Center] is second to none; it’s
state-of-the-art, not just as a teaching facility, but because it’s green. The
recycling, the sustainability put us light years ahead.’’ Those skills and that
focus, he says, are going to be necessary for these 21st-century chefs.
Over lunch in a student-run high-end dining room, where the day’s menu
focuses on the cuisine of Southeast Asia, Kevin Duffy, dean of the College of Culinary Arts, notes that the new
building was many years in the planning. “It started the day I became dean,
seven years ago,’’ says Duffy. The process of selecting an architect, he says,
was an “interesting exercise.’’ A committee reviewed lots of good designs but
ultimately went with Tsoi/Kobus because the group had someone on staff with a
nutrition background.
It was a new challenge for the firm. “We’d done a lot of high-tech labs,’’
says Koulbanis, “but nothing culinary.’’ Although those labs were similarly
complex, he says, “the ductwork in here was mind-blowing.’’ And no detail
escaped notice. To combat the dreaded “freshman 15,’’ an even greater risk for
culinary students, the architects configured the layout so as to encourage
students to take the stairs rather than the elevator. But the challenges were
welcome: “This was the most exciting building I’ve worked on,’’ says Koulbanis.
And for students, it might be the most exciting building they ever work in,
though some of its subtleties may escape them. Grabbing lunch later with fellow
student Jason Rosenblatt, Ross says she “didn’t notice that the floors were
color-coded.’’ But she and Rosenblatt, who hopes one day to open a high-end
kosher steakhouse, have plenty of praise for the center. “All the labs are
beautiful,’’ says Rosenblatt. And he singles one out for particular praise:
“The new beverage labs with the brewery - they’re awesome.’’
