These guys know how to throw a party.
The 12,000-square-foot showroom of Andrew Richard Designs has hosted a ping-pong tournament, a beer pouring competition, magazine launches and charity fund-raisers.
No wonder brothers Andrew and Richard Bockner are the go-to designers for the Players’ Lounge at the Rogers Cup.
Homes-Extra got a tour of the lounge during the 2010 men's tournament and spoke to the designer about how to create a home-away-from-home for Roger and Rafa and Roddick.
“You have to walk a couple of fine lines,” says ARD’s Andrew Bockner. “It has to be functional; they have to be able to relax; the layout has to be tranquil.”
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This is a private place for players where they can unwind, have a snack, catch up on e-mail. Where they can bring their families. Where they can pass the time through lengthy tiebreakers and inevitable rain delays.
So Bockner created individual “zones” for work and play: there is an arrangement of bistro tables near the bar; a separate outdoor patio is where spouses and friends go to sneak a smoke; in the central gaming area, Austrian Jurgen Melzer (the #15 player in the world) was having a spirited game of table tennis.
The bank of laptops was going full tilt, and when the players want to suss out their future opponents, they could watch live matches in the TV area, where groupings of ARD’s Tranquility chairs, loveseats and coffee tables are clustered in front of flat-screens.
If the furnishings evoke a South Beach sundeck or a Fiji beach cabana, that’s because ARD was on the one of the first design firms to start thinking about outdoor environments as extensions of the indoors. The pieces are beautiful enough for a living room but sturdy enough to withstand a Canadian backyard, constructed of commercial-grade materials (including ARD’s own proprietary Solartex). That makes them perfect for the strapping forms of today’s pro players.
World #25 Feliciano Lopez had no trouble fitting his 6-foot-2-inch, 187 lb. frame on the Cedar chaise lounge, where he planted himself for a spa treatment. Nearby, Nikolay Davydenko (#6 in the world) was Skype’ing from the comfort of a Tranquility daybed.
ARD has decked out the rooftop lounges and outdoor amenity spaces of dozens of Toronto condos. Bockner brought to these residential spaces what he learned designing commercial spaces like the poolside at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
“Commercial clients want better materials, cleaner, architectural designs,” Bockner says.
Homeowners have been coming around to this idea…slowly. To help them along, he sometimes takes familiar, traditional looks and adapts them.
For instance, the Cedar lounge chair is his spin on the Muskoka chair. His Kayman and Greenwich collections feature ultra-modern versions of the good old picnic table – a sleek and stylish alternative that would work on the narrowest condo balconies.
Style and space are issues here, too. But designing a chill lounge for world-class athletes brings a whole other set of challenges.
While the players generally get along off-court, they don’t necessarily want to make nice an hour before opening up a can of whoop-ass on each other.
With this in mind, Bockner has tried to give them plenty of options: “They can co-exist and relax apart; they can choose to socialize or not.”
And that’s the best kind of party.
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