Steve Jones M.Arch. ’92

"Kumo" means "cloud" in Japanese, and architect Steve Jones M.Arch. ’92 has created an environment as pure and pristinely white as a bank of cumulous for this hot new Melrose Avenue restaurant. Jones and his Marina del Rey firm, SFJones Architects, Inc. designed the new sushi restaurant, creating an elegantly monochromatic space that has drawn many rave reviews. He understands that restaurants are about much more than just food.

"When people go out to dinner, their expectation is to have a stimulating sensual experience: taste, visual ambiance social interaction,” Jones says. “My objective is to make the visual experience as delicious as the food.”

Jones has been redefining restaurants for almost 15 years. His first triumph was Typhoon, the Pan-Asian restaurant at the Santa Monica Airport, designed while he was still an associate with a major Los Angeles architecture firm. He later returned to the Santa Monica Airport site to design the Hump under the aegis of his own firm. Since then, he has alternated between designing spectacular spaces for unique dining destinations, and creating fresh visual statements for national and international companies.

As a graduate student, Jones worked on projects late into the night in his studio at Perloff Hall. UCLA not only equipped him with the skills to become a successful architect, but it also taught him much about the place he would be implementing those skills

“I learned a lot about Los Angeles’ architectural history,” Jones says. “What could be better than working in the city that I learned so much about in school?”

Jones moved on to become the in-house architect for the Wolfgang Puck Food Company where he helped develop the company's casual dining branch.  He left the company in 1996 to start his own firm, but his association with the superstar chef continued. Puck hired Jones and his new firm to create a new version of Spago in Beverly Hills and to design Wolfgang Puck Cafes in Canada, Kuwait and Japan.

“Spago was the most exciting project to work on because it was the first project of my own,” Jones says.

SFJones Architects Inc. has built a reputation in the field of restaurant and hospitality design, with national commissions including the Daily Grill and the Grill on the Alley. Three new Grill on the Alley restaurants designed by Jones are due to open soon in Thousand Oaks, Glendale and Miami. Jones also worked with Steven Foster to design Lucky Strike in Hollywood, creating a brand new concept: a high-style bowling alley-cum-lounge. The idea of a retro-chic bowling alley was such a hit that they went on to design seven more Lucky Strikes.

Jones was also the architect behind the sleek and luxurious Asian-inspired Spa Mystique at the Century Plaza Hotel. He remodeled the famous hotel itself.

Creating trendy restaurants, bowling alleys and hotels isn’t without its challenges. Jones must work with visionary people who often ask him to do the impossible.

”Sometimes it’s tough to get people’s expectations in line with reality,” Jones says. “It takes time to get them to understand time and money limitations.”

Typically, SFJones Architects Inc. works on 12 to 15 projects a year. For 2008, he is working on a new restaurant in an airplane hangar at the Torrance Airport and a French brasserie in the Clock Tower building in Santa Monica for the owners of Falcon, Voda Bar and Pearl Dragon.