Featured Project

Happy Joe's Rockford
Happy Joes, a core client of Joseph Architectural Group, contracted us to design a new restaurant for their new Rockford location. The company has pizza restaurants throughout the Midwest and they were looking for an exciting, updated image to coincide with their new expanded menu. The new restaurant will be offering breakfast pizza, adding breakfast to the meals available.

The new image was to be “exciting,” have “movement,” be “appealing to “soccer mom’s” with “attractive elements” to catch the attention of potential customers passing by on East Riverside Boulevard. It needed to be “kid friendly and appealing”, yet have some sophistication to attract adults.

We provided four potential concepts. The company chose one which had a variety of elements to give the building some unique character. The gold colored wedge shapes on the front of the building abstractly represent slices of pizza with the color reflecting the color of dough. The red siding was chosen to represent pizza sauce. The narrow horizontal siding was used to give the building a subtle vernacular connection to Midwestern barns and houses. A stone veneer along the base of the building and along the sides of the entry provides durability and a contrast to the contemporary elements throughout the building. The same stone is used to encase the interior steel columns, to tie the exterior into the interior. Movement is created by the curved elements on the exterior. These elements are accented at night with LED light strips conforming to the curved elements. Smaller versions of the same wedge shaped elements found on the front of the building provide a frame work for the outdoor dining space. Additional up-lights in the ground and LED lights in the canopy are used to give the building a different appearance at night. The twin towers on each corner provides for a unique and tall dining space on the interior.

The interior was designed by Michelle Blunk, owner of Conceptual Designs, Inc., from Bettendorf, Iowa. The movement and excitement created on the exterior is carried through and amplified in the interior. Some of the elements that create a unique image are floating shapes, or "clouds," suspended from the roof structure, bold paint colors, baseballs used along the low partitions, a variety of lighting features, and plasma television’s. These elements also make the restaurant fun for people to experience.