Ivy Studio Drops a Lesson in Japanese Restraint into a Raw Concrete Shell in Downtown Montreal.

Ivy Studio has spent the better part of a decade making Montreal’s commercial interiors more interesting than they have any right to be. Minnibar, opened in spring 2026, might be the studio’s most disciplined outing yet.

The 160-square-metre restaurant and café occupies the ground floor of a downtown high-rise, with roughly six-metre ceilings and full-height glazing wrapping two sides of the corner unit. The menu is contemporary Italian, built around meticulously crafted pizza and pasta. The interior looks east—to the atmospheric principles of Japanese minimalism.

The near-square plan is organised around an enclosed central core containing the kitchen, bar and pizza counter. Guests enter into the daytime café, and as they move around that volume the room slides—without ceremony or signage—into the restaurant.

In Constant Evolution: M.A.D. Creative Hub by Ivy Studio.

This Montreal office for a creative agency delivers a flexible space for multitude of uses. Ivy Studio deployed a ‘work in progress’ aesthetic—the interior feels like it’s in a constant state of evolution.

A long counter runs the front window, bridging the morning coffee crowd and the evening dinner service, before dropping in height to form an intimate omakase-style perch in front of the fully exposed pizza oven. Beyond it: movable tables, a single banquette, and an angled, monolithic DJ booth squared up to the entrance sightline.

“Minnibar embraces its raw shell,” explain the designers. Concrete floor, formidable columns, walls and ceiling slab are left untouched, with ducts and conduits fully visible. Against that grit, the palette is strictly monochromatic—off-white and grey, punctuated by sharp black—and given depth through hand-plastered walls, heavily textured stone, opaque stained timber and translucent textiles. A triangular motif is threaded through the millwork with real persistence.

The custom furnishings do the heavy lifting. A cream stone bar counter in a heavy leather finish sits on an angled stainless steel footrest, backed by black timber and a wine cellar glimpsed through triangular windows.

The omakase counter is finished entirely in white oak, with low stools in round camel velvet—the warm, obvious heart of the room. In the dining area, black-stained tables on triangular bases meet Ivy Studio’s first in-house chair design: ashwood stained a bespoke opaque soft yellow, its heavy curved legs resolving into a delicate backrest.

Lighting tempers all that volume. A dropped, wrap-around structure of white-stained timber rods and backlit rice paper glows above the central counters and reads from the street after dark, while the upper glazing gets the same treatment to soften the daylight.

A central art screen with controllable light sources lets the room be recut by mood, and slatted panels conceal secondary lighting while quietly fixing the acoustics.

Raw downtown shell, refined Japanese calm, a pizza oven and a turntable. It shouldn’t hold together as neatly as it does.

A Permanent Sunset Crowns Plutarco's Hand Roll Bar.

Golden hour never ends at Myo. In Madrid's Chamberí, Plutarco have engineered a permanent sunset—a warm, backlit glow that crowns the bar and refuses to fade.

[Images courtesy of Ivy Studio. Photography by Alex Lesage.]