Welcome

On a recent Friday night, I wedged my way into The Roosevelt in downtown Phoenix. It's a convivial eatery — well, okay, maybe more like a lounge — that offers up great wine, beer and gourmet tavern food (no, that's not an oxymoron). Settle down with a drink and a sandwich there, and you'll be talking to everyone around you. It's that kind of place. "It's a community hall," says architect Joe Herzog, who, along with his merzproject team, handled The Roosevelt's design.

Indeed, restaurants today have become community halls in some way — serving their "neighborhood," be it downtown residents, suburbanites or even guests of a hotel. These days, restaurant design isn't just about creating a lobby, bar, dining room and kitchen. It is, as Herzog points out, helping foster a sense of community, which, in turn, leads to success. Check out that community — and some great designs — in the restaurant projects we're featuring in this issue.

We're also paying a visit to Associates III in Denver, the interior design firm that (literally) wrote the book on green residential design. Our "Green Scene" column chronicles their transformation from business-as-usual to being at the leading edge of sustainable, eco-sensitive design and business practices. And, if you have the inclination, you can pay visits to numerous universal design–related conferences around the country (and a couple out of the country), as detailed in this issue's "Design for All."

With the New Year, we've launched a few new elements within the magazine. Namely, we'll be profiling not just one, but two showrooms in each issue (visit Columbine in Denver and UnderFoot in Scottsdale a few pages farther on). There are just too many great places featuring great products for us to whittle down the stories to six a year. So now, we're doubling our offerings. We're also introducing a new column, "Materials + Methods," to get in-depth on a featured building product. This issue, it's Clay Earth Plaster, the Albuquerque-based firm that produces eco-friendly, soulful plasters.

Finally, we'd like to welcome our new readers in Southern California. While we love our deserts and mountains, there's something appealing about adding "ocean" to the Sources + Design environment. We look forward to featuring California sources and designs soon.

Photograph by Elliot Lincis