Hot Shots: Phaedrus Studio

social: @phaedrus.studio
project: Fix Coffee + Bikes, Toronto

For David Grant-Rubash, architecture, interiors, and industrial design are all of a piece. Understanding how things are built, down to the smallest detail, drives him and informs his Toronto- and New York–based practice, Phaedrus Studio. Grant-Rubash, who studied architecture at the University of Copenhagen, then earned his master’s of interior architecture and product design from Kansas State University, began his career at firms in Manhattan and Toronto, including Sweeny&Co. Architects, where he met now coprincipal Tyler Malone, before his 2015 founding of Phaedrus, the Greek word chosen for its “reference to the exchange of ideas, a fitting foundation for a design practice,” Grant-Rubash notes. “A motivation to launching my own firm was a return to smaller-scale, more intimate, more complex projects.” 

His holistic view is exemplified at the second outpost of Fix Coffee + Bikes, a 1,360- square-foot café and shop in Toronto that Grant-Rubash formulated to take full advantage of the existing compact site, emphasize movement, and continue Fix’s mission for community building. The mezzanine, contained in a massive swoosh of white drywall, sets the tone. “Upon entering, customers see that it’s a space not so much divided but that has multiple parts, like a bike, and the mezzanine drives them in one direction versus the other,” he explains. One way is the bright ground-floor coffee bar, it a heft of matte white laminate; the other, up the stairs, its treads and risers in black carbon steel, is the bike-repair area, where petal pink is introduced. It’s the color of the matte epoxy–coated MDF topping the service bar, shaped like a racetrack, and the perforated wall backing parts and tools. “It unifies, softens, and pleasantly contrasts,” Grant-Rubash explains. It all adds up to a dynamic environment drawing in coffee lovers and cyclists alike. phaedrus.studio