Workshop Kitchen & Bar: An Industrial-Chic Sanctuary

Location: Palm Springs, CA (Uptown Design District)
Architect: SOMA Architects (Michel Abboud)

Outdoor café seating with white wire chairs from the Bend Goods collection

The Curation

Workshop Kitchen & Bar is housed in the historic El Paseo building, a 1926 Spanish Colonial landmark that has served as a movie theater and furniture showroom. The interior is a striking example of Brutalism reinterpreted, featuring 27-foot cathedral ceilings, monolithic concrete booths, and a 35-foot communal table.

Our products were curated to balance this "Industrial Chic" intensity with visual lightness. In the high-traffic environment of a James Beard Award-winning restaurant, the White Café Tables with the Diagonal leg pattern provide a sophisticated, airy vibe. The geometric white legs serve as a beautiful counterpoint to the stark, cast-in-place concrete, creating a "playful creativity" that honors the building's historic bones while maintaining a modern, worldly edge.

The Synergy

The synergy between Bend Goods and Workshop Kitchen & Bar lies in a shared commitment to "technical rigor" and the elevation of industrial materials into art. Architect Michel Abboud’s approach—inserting bold, minimalist concrete elements into a historic shell—mirrors our own 21st-century reinvention of the wire medium.

Bend was a natural use case for this project because our furniture functions as "functional sculpture". The diagonal patterns of our table legs echo the linear precision of the restaurant’s 17-foot concrete booths and custom lighting. By using high-performance powder coating, we provided a seating solution that is "built like a buffalo" but visually light enough to dance in the desert sun, perfectly suited for the restaurant's alfresco dining courtyard.

The Legacy

Workshop Kitchen & Bar has been a design pilgrimage site since its completion in 2012, famously winning the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant Design in 2015. The project stands as a testament to the vision of Chef-Owner Michael Beckman and SOMA Architects in transforming a 90-year-old theater into a "temple of modernist concrete".

Our furniture has been a part of the Workshop experience since the restaurant’s opening, with our Ethel chairs and Lucy stools gracing the patio for a decade. This enduring presence is a testament to the longevity and quality of our materials, proving that "wire, done right" can withstand years of commercial repetition while remaining a modern design icon.