From Basement Storage Room to Japan-Inspired Speakeasy

In the South Congress neighborhood of Austin, Texas, known to be a mecca for musicians, resides the Hotel Magdalena — a hip boutique hotel with colorful rooms and a boomerang-shaped pool.

When the hotel was initially completed in 2020, one space was unaccounted for: a 1,660-square-foot storage room filled with boxes in the basement. Bunkhouse, a hospitality company headquartered in Austin that owns Hotel Magdalena, hired architecture firm Rios Austin to transform the underutilized space into a bar.

The result of that assignment, Equipment Room, takes its name from the former use of the space.

“I think that Bunkhouse had always thought that it could be something, but just couldn’t put everything together at the time of the hotel construction,” said John Hallock, studio director at Rios Austin, which handled the planning, the architecture and the interior design of Equipment Room. “They had this clear vision, and it was up to us to figure out how to use the space.”

The collaboration between Bunkhouse and Rios Austin was partially the result of a longstanding friendship. Tenaya Hills, senior vice president of design and development at Bunkhouse, and John Hallock have been friends and collaborators since they met while studying at the University of Texas at Austin.

“It was super collaborative, and I wanted it to be, because this is a project that had a lot of different goals,” Hallock said. “In essence, in terms of our friendship, that took precedence over our ego. It made it easier as well, and it made it fun.”

Equipment Room was inspired by the jazz kissa, which is a Japanese café that specializes in the listening and appreciation of jazz music. The concept of kissa was particularly popular in the 1920s, leading up to World War II, and it went through a renaissance period after the war . The establishments were particularly popular since jazz performances were few and far between in Japan and jazz records had to be imported from the United States at a premium.

Equipment Room is a 40-seat bar still notably focused on its patrons’ music-listening experience, but unlike the traditional kissa, it’s not solely devoted to jazz recordings. Instead, Equipment Room features a carefully curated selection of more than 1,200 records that hail from an array of genres and eras.

Traditionally, kissas were known to be controlled environments, so much so that some of them did not allow patrons to talk, lest they disrupt the music. At Equipment Room, clients can talk, but the ambiance remains calmer than other drinking establishments.

Equipment Room operates on a table service model, save for seats at the bar, where guests are served by the bartender. Patrons need to make a reservation; when they arrive, a host welcomes them and walks them to their assigned seat. “What they really don’t want is people standing next to you at the bar trying to order drinks,” Hallock said.

“It’s a very curated service,” Hallock said. “They want you to experience [the music] in the right way, in the right setting.”

As the space is so music-focused, acoustics were the most challenging element of the project, according to Hallock. “We took the acoustics really seriously,” he said. “It found us looking way forward for how the space would ultimately look, but also working with the acoustic engineers, the millwork fabricators and the contractors to get everything to work out right.”

The acoustic components have been hidden so guests can just enjoy the music, decor and vibes. The speakers, courtesy of luxury speaker brand Klipsch, are housed in the same wood as the millwork behind the built-in bar. “Things were built in, so it was a lot of work to pull off a sound element that looks really simple,” Hallock said.

Teaming with international design firm Arup for acoustics and partnering with Breakaway Records for the in-house DJ and record collection, Hallock and his team were guided by early diagrams from the acoustic team.

All the walls were insulated to optimize acoustics, with acoustic felt lining the curved back wall, acoustic tiles over the bar and pyramid foam at the entrance.

The only surface that couldn’t be reworked was the concrete floor. However, to compensate for that element, a rug was added, as well as softer furnishings to absorb sound.

“Everything was well coordinated through an acoustic perspective and then into the whole interior design,” Hallock said.

The space is “essentially only one room,” Hallock noted, laughing. Yet it is broken up into different zones to create various moods throughout, such as bar seating where customers can talk to the DJ, lounge seating in the middle of the space, and a VIP corner at the back that is separated by wood screens.

Some of the seating was raised on a step and the ceiling was curved above it, to both hide the mechanical elements and to create a beneficial acoustic effect. “That was really our way of creating a few different seating environments and breaking up the space so that each zone felt neat,” Hallock said.

The carefully selected music plays through turntables on speakers, but there are also seats with wired headphones so solitary guests can listen to the same music, yet have a more intimate experience.

“I think that’s why doing so many kinds of environments is important, because they probably have people there on a Tuesday who are just traveling — they come down to the bar hotel and they are alone. But then you also have people with friends and bigger groups,” Hallock said.

The project was done affordably, which means that many light fixtures and pieces of furniture were sourced secondhand by the Bunkhouse team. They found a stained-glass window at an antique dealer in Philadelphia and Hallock created a space for it.

To accommodate the piece, custom steel frames were installed. It now resides at the entrance, welcoming guests. “The only light you have is from the stained glass that is capturing light from the street. So, it’s kind of a spiritual space that you go into; you go downstairs through a portal,” Hallock said.

Equipment Room is inspired by Japan, but it is also a product of the spirit of Austin, with a Texas-themed record collection and a clear relationship to its musician-centric neighborhood of South Congress. That unique Austin vibe makes Equipment Room popular with tourists and locals alike.

“I wanted to capture something that felt like a part of Austin, like it’s been there for years,” Hallock said. “Locals go there. A lot of people are always messaging me that they are going by after work, and that’s great to hear.”