Restaurant Reopening Assistance
Thank you to our volunteers who provided design assistance to help local restaurants respond to evolving COVID-related standards.
Creating Welcoming Temporary Outdoor Seating for Restaurants
This design guide for our friends in the hospitality industry demonstrates concepts and solutions to help expand their restaurant operations into the public realm while navigating the challenges of COVID-19. Guide created by Prellwitz Chilinski Associates.
View the guideAs restaurants began to open for outdoor dining during COVID-19, we called on our design community to lend a hand. Local municipalities relaxed permitting requirements and expanded the public realm to allow restaurants to safely accommodate diners.
The Boston Society for Architecture (BSA) and the Boston Society of Landscape Architects (BSLA) organized our members to volunteer conceptual design assistance that could help local restaurants design or redesign outdoor seating and also help think about how to redesign interior spaces to respond to evolving COVID-related standards.
Volunteer architects, landscape architects, designers, and students in one of these disciplines met with restaurant owners (at the business or digitally) to talk about plans and measure the space. The volunteer then sent the restaurant owner a basic conceptual design sketch of how to reconfigure outdoor and/or indoor space layout.
Please note: Any design requests beyond this were not included in this offer for assistance and volunteers were not being asked to assist with the permitting process for the new seating layout. Measured sketches are for conceptual design purposes to guide layout only; they will not be stamped and are not intended to be used as a construction document.
If you know of a business in Cambridge or Somerville that might be interested in this assistance, please share this request for assistance form.
If you have questions about this process please contact Jennifer Effron: [email protected]
Current state and local guidelines:
ReDesigning Boston: Restaurants Inside and Out
Session hosted on August 26 2020
As restaurants began to open for outdoor dining during COVID-19, the design community stepped up to lend a hand. Local municipalities relaxed permitting requirements and expanded the public realm to allow restaurants to safely accommodate diners.
