Jen Lewin designs The Kitchen Denver to savor simplicity

Above, Lewin combines modern and classical elements to give the room a bright and airy feel.Left, Lewin's Edison Orbs use incandescent light bulbs in place of crystals to create a "Victorian modern" feel. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

A restaurant kitchen is a place of frenzied motion, where food, fire, sharp knives and human bodies swirl in a dance of constant near-collision. There's no other room where surfaces and light are so essential to what goes on.

That's why designer Jen Lewin believed that to be successful, such surfaces have to embrace simplicity. To play only a supporting role. To recede, to become merely a canvas for food and faces.

And do it elegantly, durably, sustainably.

Those were artist Lewin's goals for The Kitchen Denver, the new outpost of The Kitchen Boulder and its subsidiary eateries, Upstairs and Next Door.

"You almost want to make a little safe haven for a restaurant," Lewin said. "In a home, a kitchen is the most

The Kitchen is opening a new location in downtown Denver at 16th Street and Wazee Street. On Thursday, March 8, 2012. Designer Jen Lewin was at the site which combines modern with classical elements. Details of a booth back. ( Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

The space on the 16th Street Mall was anything but open, inviting or simple when Lewin and her team began renovations. It had been a Cajun restaurant, with heavy velvet curtains and three separate dining rooms that wrapped the corner of 16th and Wazee streets.

So as in the group's other restaurants, the first step was to subtract anything fabric, anything fussy and open big windows onto the street scene outside.

Then came black floors. Black-stained oak, with a couple of coats of wax. When construction crews were coming in and out putting the final touches on the remodeling, the dust and scuffs made the floor look old and yet new.

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Jen Lewin designs The Kitchen Denver to savor simplicity