American nostalgia and southern charm come together at Eastside Bowl, a former big-box department store space turned bowling alley, diner, arcade and music venue in Nashville, Tennessee. Designed by Cowboy Creative, the in-house creative studio of the hospitality brand Urban Cowboy, the dormant K-Mart building, spanning 33,000 square feet, stands transformed in a postmodern, atomic style that blends various influences from the 1950s to the 1980s.
Eastside Bowl: step inside
‘We wanted to elicit a dream-like state from the moment you entered the front door. The building was a massive run-down K-Mart with soaring 50-foot ceilings, so the scale of everything needed to be exaggerated,’ says Lyon Porter, co-founder of Urban Cowboy and Cowboy Creative. ‘We took huge inspiration from the Big Lebowski dream sequence and the second that carpet went down, we knew we had something special.’
Together with the studio’s head of design, Frank Favia, Lyons guided the team towards implementing plenty of custom-designed features, such as the immense carpet emblazoned with a vibrant pattern in an oversized scale by Xee Summers, hand-pressed letterpress bowling pin wallpaper by Clint Van Gemert of Printburg, gold paint accents created from the exact paint recipe that Gibson Guitars uses for its iconic Gold Top guitars, and even a 1950s disco ball, sourced from the Round Top antiques show in Texas.
The maximalist vision is all-encompassing, from the floor to the walls and almost every corner of the venue – a shared attribute amongst all of Urban Cowboy’s properties, which includes its original outpost in the Catskills, New York, a sister Urban Cowboy in Nashville, and a retro motel, bar and swim club in Nashville called The Dive.
Through the incorporation of all these details, the building’s vast size feels inviting, warm and exciting. Fitted with banquette seating (white leather in the diner, black by the bowling lanes and green in the bar), laser-cut screens and chevron-shaped dropped ceiling features, Eastside Bowl captures all the camp and kitsch flavour of a bygone era while also bringing it up to date.
-
First look: Western Mongolia meets Kew Gardens in John Pawson and Oyuna Tserendorj’s cashmere throwsArchitectural designer John Pawson and cashmere designer Oyuna Tserendor have collaborated on a cashmere throw collection inspired by Pawson’s 70m Lake Crossing in the Royal Botanical Gardens
-
How to buy art: the accessible new marketThanks to a growing pool of art advisers, digital intelligence and collector groups, buyers are better equipped than ever
-
The coolest design-led coffee shops in SeoulSeoul counts more coffee shops per capita than any other city in the world – cut straight to our six must-visit spots
-
Three sleek new design showrooms you need to see in Los AngelesThree international design showrooms have started a retail design boom in Los Angeles. Here are the stores to put on your radar
-
One to watch: Casey Zablocki’s Rocky Mountain surroundings feed into his vast sculptural workMontana-based artist Casey Zablocki uses one of America’s largest kilns to create monumental ceramic, functional sculptures
-
This remodelled San Francisco family home by MEMarchitecture and Studio Volpe is a masterpiece of soothing modernityA sensitive and coherent approach by the San Francisco-based architects and designers has resulted in a home of tactile beauty, character and comfort
-
First Look: a domestic idyll by Lucy Stark and Fabien Cappello at the Blunk SpaceInspired by the life and times at JB Blunk's haven of a house in Inverness, a new exhibition of paintings and objects has us dreaming of California
-
Los Angeles gallery Marta explores the enduring inspiration of grottos with an ethereal, multi-sensory group showAt Marta, guest curator Krista Mileva-Frank exhibits work by 13 contemporary talents that demonstrate how the Renaissance-era grotto continues to fuel our imagination
-
Postcard from Lower Manhattan’s burgeoning gallery districtFrom Collectible New York 2024 to Tribeca’s expanding gallery district a few blocks north, collectible design abounds this September
-
First look: Ini Archibong explores 2D design with Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg for new canned gin drink‘I had to make sure that the packaging looks like it deserves to be in their hands’: Ini Archibong tells us what it was like working with music giants Dre Dre and Snoop Dogg on their new canned ‘Gin & Juice'
-
Studio Shamshiri and Abask unite on the softest interior décor collectionLA-based Studio Shamshiri joins forces with Abask on a new collaboration of interior objects including pillows, throws, and eyemasks
