Flour + Water Pizza Shop | Oakland

Oakland, CA | 2026

Flour + Water Pizza Shop in the rapidly transforming Waverly neighborhood of Oakland is the next iteration of translating the Flour + Water Pizzeria brand into a quick-service restaurant and for the first time brings it to our side of the Bay!  As with all our work for the Flour + Water Hospitality Group, the design goal was to capture the spirit of their food and use that to enhance the nature of their place.  What that meant at Oakland was to put their high-quality pizza-making on display for the whole neighborhood and in turn enliven not just the guests’ space but also the kitchen with natural light, views, and beautiful, healthy materials.

The 2,000-sf space is located on the ground floor of the new Lark Uptown apartment tower near the northwest corner of Lake Merrit right off Harrison Street on 24th.  With the new apartment towers on either side of 24th and both Tarts de Feybesse and Highwire Coffee just across the street there was the opportunity to contribute growing a vibrant pedestrian nexus at the corner of 24th and Waverly.  We decided to take advantage of the floor to ceiling glass along the storefront and line the dining room with counter seating facing out to the sidewalk and center a large communal table in the middle of the space.  These communal seating arrangements both engage with the pedestrian life of the neighborhood as well as foster casual connections among our guests.

The kitchen is entirely open to the dining space with views out to the neighborhood beyond, putting the pizza-making process that Flour + Water is rightly proud of on full display.  Part of that process is storing hundreds of take-out pizza boxes which allowed us to celebrate their function and take advantage of their color to enliven the space.  These custom designed racks, fabricated by ReUnion Creative in Oakland, transform a practical necessity into a showcase element.  Over the course of the day the take-out boxes get used up, slowly revealing the kitchen beyond.  These elements are complemented by a lime-plaster micro-cement retail counter face and a dough-inspired lime-wash mural above. 

By putting kitchen process forward as a design feature in the space and the neighborhood we also create the opportunity for a reciprocal gesture of bringing natural light, views of people and plants, and high-quality, healthy materials to the kitchen staff.  One of the main tenants of biophilic design, often applied to residences or offices, is that connecting people to changing daylight and long views of plants and activity improves health, wellbeing, and productivity. 

This pairs well with the use of healthy, natural, and recycled materials wherever feasible including a custom green glaze on recycled brick tile by Fireclay Tile, a custom color on the interior Duralime micro-cement lime plaster by local manufacturer EcoStucco, and the extensive use of Richlite, a composite made from 100% recycled paper and natural resins, for the retail counter, dining counters, and communal table.  Flour + Water Hospitality takes their dedication to a regenerative future seriously.  Beyond the fact that this is an entirely electric kitchen powered by 100% renewable energy, they donate 1% of all revenue at this location to Zero Foodprint (which is also true of 1% of my own fee on this and every project).