Biga on the Banks
Client: Biga on the Banks Partnership
Architect: Alamo Architects
Completion Date: March 2000
General Contractor: Metropolitan Contracting
Located on the River Walk in downtown San Antonio, Biga On The Banks is a restaurant for award-winning chef Bruce Auden, whose unique cuisine reflects a fusion of regional flavors with international techniques and has made him an enduring presence on the national culinary scene. For Bruce we created the ultimate twenty-first century San Antonio restaurant, and this yielded a rich mix of visual opposites: slick and refined finishes meet funky vinyl coverings in fake tooled leather, votive candles sit altar-like in a long row of bread tins, the full-length view of the river is echoed in a river of white fabric drapes that winds its way sinuously through the restaurant, paralleling in spirit the river below. Biga On The Banks attempts to capture the old world charm that is so identified with San Antonio and to marry it with a sophisticated urban edge appropriate to the level of food and service it provides.