Bentel Bentel Monograph

NOURISHING THE SENSES Restaurant Architecture of Bentel & Bentel

VISUAL PROFILE BOOKS INC., NEW YORK Edited by John Morris Dixon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data: Nourishing the Senses: Restaurant Architecture of Bentel and Bentel Authors: Bentel, Carol Rusche

Bentel, Paul Bentel, Peter

ISBN 13: 978-0-9975489-0-7 ISBN 10: 0-9975489-0-8

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Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Quotes

Le Bernardin | New York, New York 22

Craft | New York, New York 116

Craft Los Angeles | Los Angeles, California 124

Toku | Manhasset, New York

Ground Café – Yale | New Haven, Connecticut 38

Craft Atlanta | Atlanta, Georgia 130

Cielo | Boca Raton, Florida 138

Eleven Madison Park | New York, New York

Tabla | New York, New York 52

Gramercy Tavern | New York, New York 148

Market by Jean-Georges | Boston, Massachusetts 58

Riverpark | New York, New York 160

Island Creek Oyster Bar | Boston, Massachusetts 168

Rouge Tomate | New York, New York

Houston’s | Boston, Massachusetts 74

Colicchio & Sons | New York, New York 176

New York Central | New York, New York 184

Aldo Sohm Wine Bar | New York, New York

The Modern | New York, New York 88

North End Grill | New York, New York 190

Café 2 at MoMA | New York, New York 104

Club 432 | New York, New York 196

Café Vettro | Las Vegas, Nevada 110

Other Bentel & Bentel Restaurants: A Selection 206

Artworks 212

Bentel & Bentel: Architects · Interior Designers · Staff 220

Consultants 221

Awards 222

Publications 225

Foreword

American restaurants and their architecture have changed a lot since 1990 when Danny Meyer asked us to modify a service station at his Union Square Café. In the following years, young restaurateurs in New York City, as in other major metropolitan areas, opened fine dining places with an emphasis on quality and value in service and cuisine rather than obeisance to a grand tradition. These new restaurants were rooted in their locales by virtue of their service to local patrons, their use of regionally sourced food, their connections to neighborhoods, and their association with emerging culinary and restaurant cultures of their cities. Places such as Union Square Café gained increasing prominence, critical acclaim and, most important, popularity. This was a change we experienced firsthand as restaurant patrons. But it was not until we had the opportunity to design such spaces that we became fully aware of the implications for their design. Change that was advantageous for the dining public turned out to be equally so for us, since it was consistent with our goals for our work. Contemporary, communal, regional, and artisanal were — and still are — hallmarks of our architecture. To the rising sensibility of up-and-coming purveyors of hospitality we brought our own passions for identification with place, material authenticity, craft, simple forms, and a compositional aesthetic that unifies every feature of a project, from the largest scale to the smallest. Physical architecture is not the only salient feature of restaurants. Nor are restaurants only about the food or the service. Rather, they are about a broader experience of hospitality, that form of personal and professional conduct that binds all aspects of a restaurant together, from hello to goodbye and everything in between. Through our work, we have come to understand the relationship between all the elements that together constitute a great restaurant and our contribution as architects. The architectural quality of restaurants resides in the careful composition of essential components, carefully orchestrated and tuned to support the social activity of “dining out” and the cultural practices associated with preparing, serving, and enjoying food. Our initial sense of what makes a dining experience special was not forged out of a reaction against the restaurant world that existed before. Instead we derived it from our personal family culture. Whether by birth or marriage, we are the children of architects trained as modernists and the grandchildren of craftspeople, many of whom were foreign-born and non-native English speakers. So we were twice estranged from popular culture — first, out of the respect for the avant-garde we acquired from our parents and second, out of the insularity of our family’s foreign

ways. These distinctions made our dining table exceptionally important as the centerpiece of daily life as well as ceremonial events. We took heart in cooking and eating together, drinking wine (generally homemade), gathering to discuss, argue and laugh together. The centrality of that custom to our lives informed everything we did then and still do today when we design restaurants. Not infrequently do we enter restaurants and absorb the sights and smells only to be reminded of a childhood experience in one or another of our extended family’s kitchens. But restaurants cannot — and should not — duplicate domestic environments or private customs. They operate in the public domain as purveyors of hospitality to diverse communities. We have learned much in the ensuing years about the professional commitments of those who envision and operate restaurants today: How to greet the guest, what makes a good table, what light best enhances the dining experience, where pressure points exist in the front-of-house, back-of-house and places in between, and how to facilitate different styles of service. Since no two restaurants are the same, the answers to these questions cannot be universalized. Thankfully, there is no science of restaurant design. Rather, great restaurants are the product of good judgment informed by knowledge, experience, conceptual clarity and, above all else, the burning desire to ensure there are no bad seats. We have been fortunate to work alongside the best in the business, having both given and taken lessons about what makes a great restaurant. From these experiences — our participation in the development of a new breed of urban restaurants, our backgrounds and aspirations as architects, our personal histories and collaboration with others who have thought seriously about hospitality and worked in the field — we have acquired a broader sense of what architectural potential lies within the design of restaurants. We firmly believe that every act of building is materially and socially consequential. As with other building types that serve the public, restaurants are crucibles for the social practices that unfold within them. They are linked to the communities they serve both outwardly, as communal institutions, and inwardly, as environments of social exchange. If their architecture possesses significance at all it is because their form, space, and materials sustain those practices and nourish the human experiences that occur there. This book provides the opportunity to look back at some of our recent work and to consider it as parts of a whole. Rather than compiling an encyclopedia, we have gathered together projects that offer variations on the central tenets of our work and

give you, the reader, an opportunity to see how those variations play out in ever greater variety. For us, this is a look backward as well as a springboard for our future efforts, a chance to reflect on what we have been able to accomplish — in collaboration with all of our clients and colleagues — within this important moment in the evolving story of the American Restaurant and to challenge ourselves to continue to move forward along a trajectory of design it suggests. We would like to thank all of those with whom we have had the privilege to work on the projects assembled in this book including: Bobby Baldwin, David and Michael Barry, George Biel, Frank Castagna, John Ceriale, Tom Colicchio, Paula and James Crown, Patrick Donelly, Katie and Paul Grieco, Will Guidara, Garrett Harker, Daniel Humm, Maguy LeCoze, Gregory Long, Glenn Lowry, Barbara Lynch, Joel Marcus, Danny Meyer, Gillis and George Poll, Gordon Ramsay, Eric Ripert, Aldo Sohm and Emmanuel Verstraeten; and those we have collaborated with, including Matt Adams, Michael Anthony, Jeremy Bearman, Andy Bennett, Marco Canora, Floyd Cardoz, Angela Hartnett, Kerry Hefernan, Tomo Kobayashi, Gabriel Kreuther, Chris Lanzisera, Pascaline Lepeltier, David Mancini, Mark Maynard-Parisi, Sisha Ortuzar, Terry Riley, David Swinghammer, Dean T. Kyle Vanderlick and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. We especially want to thank our dedicated staff without whose vigilance and commitment these projects would not have been realized with the quality they possess. We thank our immediate families for their support, assistance, guidance and the wonderful experiences that are the well-spring of our creative content. We dedicate this book to Maria and Frederick Bentel, the founding partners of Bentel & Bentel whose commitment to family and work continue to inspire our own love and passion for what we do. Their spirit lives on.

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Introduction

Architects designing restaurants design objects as small as a spoon, as intimate as two chairs and table and as large and public as a banquet room for hundreds. This range reflects the special nature of the restaurant program. Simultaneously places of work and leisure, restaurants cater to the quotidian and the special event. Organized internally around their service, they connect with regional resources for food supplies, staff and cultural relevancy. While processing tons of raw food and dispersing waste, restaurants support the most refined and acculturated social practices. The contrasts evident in the program of a restaurant are not black and white, but rather finely graded. Between big and small, intimate and public, formal and informal, unprocessed and fully finished, there is a spectrum of things to design. Like nesting eggs, the spoon sits on the table served by the chair within the room of a building that is itself located in the city that draws upon a region. Restaurant architecture reflects that layered complexity. The design of restaurants is at once an exercise in differentiation — the segregation of program parts by function, space needs and character — and one of synthesis as we and the cohort of owners, restaurateurs, and chefs, as well as engineers, equipment designers and restaurant personnel strive to achieve a unity of concept and execution. As architects of restaurants, we dwell on the particular and local, seeking threads of information about the place and purpose of the restaurant with the expectation that they will reappear, woven into the fabric of the design. We investigate, analyze, reflect, propose, test, prototype, reflect again, re-propose and compose with all of the artistic imperatives of achieving a composition that is more than the sum of the parts. That is why our work is varied, each project bound to a specific time and place but linked by a common method of inquiry and resolution of use, material, technique, light, form and space. Restaurants, especially the urban restaurants that are primarily the subject of our work, are also social venues, places where communities of people gather. Restaurants not only serve their dining patrons. They can also anchor the communities around them as parts of a civic landscape, as neighborhood landmarks as well as rooted business enterprises and places of employment. Urban anthropologists recognize this attribute of restaurants when they interpret dining establishments of all stripes — the historical taverns, inns, bars of the past, as well as the diners, coffee shops, pizzerias of today and all of the cultural, ethnic, regional and national permutations of the restaurant — as the markers of urban neighborhoods. Evidence of this is provided by the most successful restaurants in New York City, including the "destination" restaurants that

succeed because they are loved by locals as well as newcomers and outsiders.

Further evidence of the integration of restaurants into their locales is given by the diversity of successful restaurants by location within and among cities. We note the all-important differences of character and culture between restaurants in Brooklyn and Manhattan as well as in San Francisco, Chicago and Boston or Amsterdam, London and Beijing. This is as true of the one-off restaurants we have designed such as Cielo in Boca Raton and Island Creek Oyster Bar in Boston as it is of branded restaurants such as Houston's, Bluesmoke or the several Craft Restaurants. What passes in one place will not in another. As with any creative effort, designing a restaurant is a process that passes through distinct phases from the initial conception and development to final execution. We are struck by the parallels between our work as architects designing restaurants and the work of our peers in the culinary arts who first plot their menus in response to the seasonal availability of their raw material and who transform that material through the application of their expertise and aesthetic sensibility. As with any design practice, the medium defines the way an audience will relate to it. In preparing and sharing food, chefs and restaurateurs provide physical and emotional satisfaction. As molders of man-made environments, architects form places that subsequently contain and influence the human activities taking place there. Architects conceive forms and spaces through an unfolding quest to locate a consequential vision in material form. As an introduction to our work we offer brief reflections on that vision as it is evident in our work. Place-making Places are memorable spaces, environments whose image we associate with an event or practice and that stimulate both visual and emotional recollection. As locations simultaneously of social and private engagement, restaurants are predisposed to conjure powerful memories, if not solely because of their physical features then because of the environment in concert with the food, the service, the company and conversation. The architecture of restaurants does not provide the content of these various components of experience, but rather supports them, constituting what some have called a "thick" space, one which performs discretely in response to the various needs of servers and those served. For this reason, as designers we look first to the many overlapping uses of restaurant architecture. Guests arrive, dine and depart. Raw material comes in, is processed and is delivered as food or sent out as waste. These two intersecting arcs of activity underlie the restaurant program. Our design work begins with the orchestration of spaces that service them independently and in unison. This sounds like a rudimentary task and, indeed, it can proceed from a simple diagram of relationships of uses. But this mapping not only distributes parts of the program, it also clarifies the relationship

Figure 1 A,B,C,D: The Modern: Design evolution from Program Diagram to Plan Diagram, Ceiling Diagram to Seating Plan

Figure 2 A,B,C: Riverpark: From Program Diagram to Schematic Plan to Seating Diagram

of the parts and suggests the final form of the plan (Figures 1 A,B,C,D; 2 A,B,C). The relationships we sketch out at the beginning of a project remain clearly delineated in the finished work, an important point that references the need to deliver a space that supports the hospitality concept. One sees this in the allocation of dining and service areas, the careful location of service points, the subtle but important distinctions between casual seating areas and fine dining locations. Notice also the clear route of entry at restaurants such as the Modern and Rouge Tomate which links the front entrance directly to the host stand and gives diners subtle guidance, ensuring that the routine of "greeting" is honored (Figures 3 A,B; 4).

Figure 3A: The Modern: Schematic section through entry vestibule from street

Figure 3B: The Modern: Entry view showing the elongated vestibule linking inside and outside

Figure 4: Rouge Tomate: View from entry door across bridge to greeter stand

The threshold between outside and inside is one that we try to establish clearly, since it marks not only the point at which the guest has arrived — and at which point the hospitality service commences — but also expresses a relationship between the restaurant and the neighborhood in which it is located. We find it difficult to ignore the physical or social context of a restaurant within a neighborhood. Look at the front room of Gramercy Tavern that opens both to the dining areas in the rear and to the street (Figures 5 A,B). This room takes the glassy storefront as its fourth wall. The engagement of the room and the public space of the street is reinforced by a three- sided art piece that relies on the open "public" side for its completion.

Figure 5A: Gramercy Tavern: Plan

Figure 5B: Gramercy Tavern: Bar area with its fourth wall on the street

We were inspired by its name to think that the architecture of Gramercy Tavern should embed the restaurant in its urban context. Tavern has its root in the French taverne or the Italian taverna, a place that provided travelers with food and shelter. The association with travelers links it to areas of the city where its services are most needed, along major thoroughfares, near ports, stations, streets, places where natives mingle with foreigners and where community identity is forged through the ancient social practice of hospitality. From its Latin root, taberna or "hut," tavern derives its flavor as a common part of the building environment rather than something monumental or exotic and set apart. A tavern is properly located adjacent to a public place where insider and outsider meet. We recognized the subtle social messages restaurants convey again while working on The Modern, the restaurant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It was one of our first restaurants located in New York Midtown business district. Through our prior work in the commercial districts of Lower Manhattan such as Gramercy Tavern and Craft, we came to appreciate the value of the plate glass storefronts to the character of our restaurants. The open façades — a historical artifact of the commercial storefronts that lined the streets of Ladies Mile — encouraged a visual connection to the passersby as we have seen at Gramercy Tavern. Midtown New York was different

physically as a consequence of its genesis as a residential area later transformed into a business center. The street walls of Midtown Manhattan are generally closed visually, reflecting lesser reason for a connection between what happens on the street and what happens inside these buildings than in urban areas dominated by retail uses. This condition has become a hallmark of well-known Midtown restaurants that tend to be invisible to passersby. The Modern was destined for a space that was similarly segregated from the street by virtue of its location off the former Museum lobby. From the outset we wanted to create a distinct passageway with a recognizable architectural character that would draw visitors from the street. The arcing illuminated wall which you see in the final plan (Figure 1D) grew in importance as an organizing element for the whole space, defining the entry as well as the plan of the bar. Place-making is as much about identifying a center as it is about marking a transition from one area within a space to others around it and when possible from inside to outside. Look closely again at the plan of Gramercy Tavern and you will notice plan elements that subtly break up the spaces without causing abrupt visual separations (Figure 6). We reinforce these connections with prominent markers using art as a focal point or a change in elevation that permits a view out over the adjoining spaces. (Figures 7 A,B,C).

Figure 6: Gramercy Tavern: Openings between rooms differentiating spaces while permitting visual connections

Figure 7 A,B: Anchoring elements within spaces to provide intermediate scale between the person and the room

Figure 7C: Elevation changes establishing areas and views

These are more than spatial or formal gestures. The ability to see people elsewhere in the restaurant engaged in, for example, a casual drink at the bar or enjoying a complex multi-course meal, is central to our belief that this diversity enlivens everyone's experience. Yet, these visual interpenetrations should not intrude on any individual experience. Material changes, furniture placement, lighting, artwork to mark boundaries or to punctuate visual axes are devices that tangibly separate one space from another without the need to create spatial boxes. Note also the careful arrangement of the dining rooms themselves. Our first instinct, one that is informed by the research we conduct wherever we travel, is that people feel comfortable when their location with respect to others is clearly defined. Our restaurants typically demonstrate a grouping of tables in ways that encourage the perception of a room as having a core and a perimeter, with three distinct layers of space across their width. We observed that the arrangement of interior spaces in thirds clarifies an individual's position in a room. The principle of three tables across is effectively a strategy of creating perimeter and center, polarities of experience that communicate their presence in spatial terms and that help the guests situate themselves physically and emotionally (Figures 8 A,B). Materialization While the plan gives structure and form to the architecture of restaurants, the three- dimensional development of the space — its materialization — is the means by which the spatial concepts embedded in the plan are fully realized (Figure 9). This is evident in all our work, but in particular in Craft, the first restaurant we completed for Tom Colicchio as an independent chef and restaurateur (Figure 10). Tom wanted to open a restaurant whose hallmark would be simple expert culinary execution: meats and vegetables prepared expertly in dishes distinctive according to the unique tastes of the ingredients. In his restaurant, Tom exercised his "craft" as the means by which raw material is transformed into a finished product.

Figure 8 A,B: Plans of Eleven Madison Park and Craft showing three tables across the room

Figure 9: Materials reinforcing sense of place

Figure 10: Craft: Scale, texture, color, and density of materials reinforcing sense of place

Studying this, we strove for a suitable architectural expression and found it in a simple plan, lighting that supported the cadence of the room and the use of materials in ways that amplified their color and texture. In the same way that Tom selects food that is seasonally available or the product of a local artisan, we composed the surfaces in Craft from a palette of materials made available to us by talented craftspeople. The resulting composition renders bronze, leather, blackened steel, glass and wood as self-evident constituents of the space. We took advantage of the preexisting building fabric, a 19 th -century retail and manufacturing building stripped of its ornamental detail by years of neglect, as a counterpoint to what we added as new. Rather than assigning a stylistic language to this material palette, we orchestrated the pieces according to their color, texture, scale, surface features, as well as the ways they are cut, tooled and finished. Craft demonstrates that the architecture of building interiors is, perhaps more than the architecture of building exteriors, an exercise in the manipulation of space and then of surfaces, textures, color and light, often artificial, to further articulate those spaces. In the distinctions of one interior surface from another, our goal is not to create visual variety but rather to affirm the qualities of space that we have developed in plan. We place soft and acoustically absorbent materials next to diners, rough and textured ones where we have an opportunity for light to emphasize the quality of surface, dark where we need background for a visual feature, reflective where we seek a spatial expansion and light-transmitting to emphasize the texture and colors of the human face. The restaurant called Toku features textured slate on walls adorned with candles and lit from below, which serve as a welcoming gesture at the point of entry. Adjacent columns in the same textured surface march through the space and provide cadence and rhythm to the experience. Reflective ceiling planes identify the territory of the main dining area as distinct from the bar. Meanwhile, the banquettes are backed by acoustical material behind an uplit sheer fabric, dramatizing the seating niche, offering acoustical comfort to those seated in front and providing a color and texture that is complimentary to their faces. Just as locally sourced food offers a tangible connection between a restaurant and the region it calls home, honoring local materials and working methods binds restaurant architecture to its locale. Craft has its terra cotta fire brick, a characteristic (but typically hidden) building material of its city. Reclaimed snow fence planks at Island Creek Oyster Bar recall the color palette of New England. Market by Jean- Georges at the W Boston Hotel features the local granite and cool hues of the waterfront. Craft LA carries forward the rich materials of the earlier Craft restaurants, but with a more essential treatment with less texture and more reflectivity to balance the interior with the directional sunlight of Southern California outside. North End Grill has its bracing palette of white porcelain and charred black wood inspired by oyster shell, fish scale and the black coal on which they are cooked. These are not stylistic references or visual graphics so much as they are spirited incarnations of a relevant local material culture.

The particularization of surfaces by material texture, color and character takes place on ceilings as well. Ceilings are the fifth elevation, a surface of importance both as backdrop to the elevations and as character-defining in itself. We have come to cherish the way a glossy ceiling plane such as that at The Modern picks up and reproduces the action taking place below, at the same time defining the territory of the room. As the lights dim and the contrast of the rough and smooth surfaces becomes more pronounced, the shiny surface becomes darker, picking up the color and light intensity of what is below it while the adjacent matte surfaces trap light and become luminous background for the dark floating plane. Through these subtle material differentiations and their related reactions to light, the lower ceiling plane opens up visually, conveying spatial infinity. The reflected movement of people and the flickering of light amplifies the inherent energy of the space. The perimeters of the ceiling planes at The Modern, highlighted by their physical separation and their material distinction, also mark the limits of territories below and imply the thresholds between one area and another, allowing the viewers to position themselves in the restaurant and the Museum. As noted above, threshold is important to us as a device of place-making. At the Modern, changes in a floor material, the lowering of a ceiling, an important piece of furniture, the sudden but controlled opening-up of a vista are cues to a spatial transition from outside to inside and, once inside, from one area to another. The acoustical properties of a space are no less an aspect of its material presence than stone, metal and glass and can work as effectively to support a larger design goal. Sound has an unquestionable impact on one's perception of space. To control it we recognize its source as energy and deploy materials for acoustical comfort as well as color and texture. This is evident in our use of acoustically porous wood fiber plank in the ceilings of restaurants such as Craft and Toku that deadens high-pitched sound while providing visual texture. Generally, we strive for 70 percent of the interior surfaces to be acoustically absorbent. The potential for acoustically absorbent materials to tangibly influence our perception of space is given by the kitchen threshold at The Modern, a vomitory formed by canted walls that audibly disconnects one room from the other without a spatial barrier. To walk to the other side of the thick wall is to be transported across an invisible sound barrier that contains the back-of-house areas. Articulation For us, the articulation of physical features — of a material palette, through categories of objects, between dissimilar spaces — is nothing less than the developed expression of the design concepts governing place-making and materials. It is evident in the development of detail, the resolution of connections between parts as well as their precise juxtaposition, whether separated by a few inches or

many feet. In some cases, the detailing is robust, as in the vigorous treatment of leather panels at Craft, where the texture, geometry and scale are counterpoints to the texture, geometry and scale of the historical fabric of terra cotta, brick and iron. In other cases, the detailing is highly refined and minimal as in the material terminations at Club 432 or Craft Los Angeles. In one case, fasteners are revealed, while in others elements are held together magically as though suspended in close proximity. Where exposed, fasteners introduce a finer scale and rhythm within a visual composition. Where hidden, their absence allows the viewer to experience the joining of materials as a synthesis rather than counterpoint, much like a slow reduction of flavors ultimately fused into a singular experience of the palate. Le Bernardin provides an example of surface articulation and its role in defining an interior space. Maguy Le Coze and Eric Ripert wanted to reinvent this venerated restaurant without diminishing its special appeal. They surmised the younger audience that had learned from places such as Gramercy or Craft of a new, less formal dining style that still achieved excellence in food and service might never experience and appreciate the special virtues of their restaurant because of its formality. We responded by proposing casual dining in the bar area with a window open to the adjacent public way. But the restaurant had always had a discrete, internal orientation closed to view from the street. In order to achieve transparency to the exterior without sacrificing entirely the privacy with which the restaurant had been associated, we developed a metal screen consisting of flat bars 3" deep and 3/8" wide on their leading edge. Thinking of the screen in theatrical terms, as a scrim that when illuminated creates the visual illusion of opacity, we called for a matte finish on the opposing interior faces of the fins to trap light and to diminish the potential for distractions from activity outside. Then we polished the narrow face of the fins, causing them to work as a subtle mirror to the activities of the dining room (Figures 11 A,B). Lit from above and below, this fin wall permits the guests to experience activity outside subtly and without competition to the energy of the interior space and passersby to witness that which had previously been secluded.

Figure 11A: Le Bernardin: Concept for bar area with windows to the street shielded by aluminum screens

Figure 11B: Le Bernardin: Bar area with windows to the street shielded by aluminum screens

Further to reinforce the sense of relaxed comfort and engagement among the diners, we designed banquettes with slightly lower seat and table height (16" seat height and 26" table top height instead of the standard seat height or 18" paired with a 29" table top height), close spacing, a mixture of high and low dining heights, smaller tables and chair widths — all to encourage a more intimate and casual character for the space (Figure 12). The restaurateur has combined this with a service style that is less formal than in the adjacent dining room. In aggregate, the design of the place is forged from its physical features and service style to achieve a vigor augmenting the character of the restaurant as a place all its own. We repeated this exercise at Aldo Sohm Wine Bar to great success (Figure 13). Design articulation also pertains to the fit and finish of features of larger scale, things present in the design that enhance a systematic performance. Again, consider lighting: we regard its presence as being either ambient — to define general illumination of a space — focused — to create areas of foreground and attention as in a table top or a flower display — or accentuating surfaces, textures and colors (Figure 14). When light fixtures are present they act as architectural features, defining space through cadence or implicit scale. We conceived the glass walls of The Modern, the metal screens at Zylo or Le Bernardin, the wine rack at Cielo, the pendant fixtures at Colicchio & Sons, and the ceiling element at New York Central as both sculptural elements, architectural features that produce scale and rhythm, and light fixtures whose presence is marked by their luminous qualities (Figures 15 A,B; 16 A,B).

Figure 12: Le Bernardin, seating detail

Figure 13: Aldo Sohm Wine Bar, seating detail

Figure 14: Light on walls to articulate material qualities

Figure 15A: Colicchio & Sons: Sketches for lighting

Figure 15B: Colicchio & Sons: light fixture

Furniture — seats, tables, stools and those things that rattle when you shake the box — is another design element whose essential features articulate a design concept. We study the relationship between furniture and the space within which it sits. Dimension, color, texture of finish, physical support, weight and ease of movement are each discrete features of furniture that influence the diner's experience of a space. The bar stool at Le Bernardin whose seat is longer and narrower than typical in deference to the intimacy and casualness of the space, the large swivel stools at Big Bar that make it easy for a group to gather around, the tables at Craft that are longer and wider to accommodate multiple shared plates and the long banquette at The Modern, whose rolled back allows diners to drape an arm over its low crest and comfortably engage those seated in the adjacent room, are each elaborations of our ideas about how these spaces should work. Differences of fractions of an inch in seat height can dramatically change the way a patron engages the table top. Greeter stands, farm tables, wine displays and service stations play a similar role in informing character and supporting a design concept (Figure 17). In our work, art pieces, whether flat or three-dimensional, moving or stationary, are integral to the design concept. Consider the Thomas Demand photograph at The Modern, the Stephen Hannock paintings at Craft and Eleven Madison Park, the Per Fronth glass print at Rouge Tomate, the Ran Ortner painting at Le Bernardin, the Robert Kushner painting at Gramercy Tavern and Kushner's mosaic at Tabla. In each case, the artwork is not present as a decorative object but as a part of the space, one of its many features, augmenting the restaurant's concept through its narrative and reinforcing the architectural content by affirming its territory and interconnections. In these ways, with these instruments and this vision, we compose our spaces, linking disparate scales, rationalizing the relationships between distinct uses while accommodating their individual requirements, resolving formal and material intersections, orchestrating the palette in ways that enhance the sense of place as well as the physical comfort of those who use and experience these restaurants. As architects we embrace the differences of program and character and make that difference a subject of design. We commit ourselves to action followed by reflection and action again, a process and method through which we seek a refined and thorough result that fulfills the promise that we envision for architecture generally and, more specifically, for the architecture of restaurants.

Figure 16A: Cielo: Sketch of illuminated wine rack

Figure 16B: Cielo, wine rack

Figure 17: Toku: Details of furniture

We have worked with Bentel & Bentel on three major projects in the past seven years. They are very good listeners and great collaborators. They have been both pragmatic and symbolic in their designs because they draw from a deep well of personal artistic creativity. The result is spectacular, timeless and evocative. We, and our guests, are nourished when we inhabit their sculptural space. David Mancini, General Manager, Le Bernardin, Prive, Aldo Sohm Wine Bar

“We wanted avant-garde, modern, but we wanted timeless too.” Emmanuel Verstraeten, Owner, Rouge Tomate

“The passion and knowledge behind everything they do is nothing short of extraordinary. Their work is much deeper than just creating something beautiful, but something that’s functional, timeless, and welcoming to everyone that walks through the door.” Will Guidara, Owner, Eleven Madison Park

“ Astute use of new materials that enliven but respect the existing context.” Jury member for AIA Small Projects Award for Ground Café

"We started with luxury, contemporary, sexy, warm, and convivial. Further on in the process, we added sophisticated, serene, and comfortable." Eric Ripert, Chef, Le Bernardin

“At last count we’ve worked with Bentel & Bentel on eight beautiful restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern, which was their very first foray into the world of hospitality. Each one of the projects is as compellingly different from one another as night and day — and therein lies the untold story on Bentel & Bentel. These are collaborative listeners of the highest order, and they crave being challenged to go places they have not yet been. They hear and tell stories via flawless design, they sweat the details, and in the end — they are happiest when they see their creations come alive with happy people providing and receiving hospitality in an environment that transports them to an even better place.” Danny Meyer, Restaurateur

“I want to accommodate everybody; this isn't an Austrian wine bar. It's not French. It's a New York wine bar that represents different cultures." Aldo Sohm, Master Sommelier, Aldo Sohm Wine Bar

“We felt it was crucial that Gramercy Tavern’s design be somewhat universal and not too themed. We wanted it to be reminiscent of an American Tavern, to suggest without being overbearing.” Danny Meyer, Restaurateur

"I just think that Bentel & Bentel has a unique ability to combine an absolute understanding of every building — from the historical standpoint to the material of the original design — where every single line and detail matters more and is more powerful than any massive, obvious display you see too much of today in restaurant architecture. It is an aesthetic of nuances, distilling the best of the historical benchmarks and the most visionary perspectives, without ever forgetting these places they build are to be lived and worked in, every day." Pascaline Lepeltier, Master Sommelier, Rouge Tomate

“Walk past or drive past at 9pm and the building — an analogy for the entire city — is alive. Suddenly, as diners come and go from the hotel’s Market restaurant, the theater district is given a new vitality.” John T O'Connor, in Esplanade magazine, on Market by Jean-Georges

"I think architecture, when it’s functioning well, has the capacity to expand us and diminish us at the same time, to create intimacy in one moment and in the next to take us outside ourselves. As a New Yorker, moving from Gramercy Tavern to The Modern to Le Bernardin, what I’m struck by in Bentel & Bentel’s work is a sensitivity to the rhythm of the human body. They build walls that are not barriers, but are opportunities to experience the sensuality of a surface, the movement of a plane, the interactions with the dynamic of interior volumes." Ran Ortner, Artist of Le Bernardin painting, "Deep Water No. 1"

Le Bernardin New York, New York

The redesign of the celebrated seafood restaurant met a need to update the entire space. One key objective of the owner was enlarging the lounge, which had been little more than a waiting area, making it a destination in itself, with a relaxed dress code and a casual menu. The words of chef Eric Ripert to describe this new vision: convivial, warm, sexy, and serene. The first design decision was to retain the iconic teak ceiling, with major modifications to the lighting incorporated in it. Down-lighting now creates an essential pool of light on each table, complemented by up-lighting of surrounding surfaces to make the spaces seem less confined. The architects sought the effect of a glowing room in which patrons were immersed in an atmosphere of ambient light, offset by carefully orchestrated focal concentrations. Everything below the ceiling is new. The architects reconfigured the former entry to gain a new window looking into the lounge from the adjoining through-block passage, plus a view outward to a featured sculpture there. In the lounge, new seating includes banquettes, a design choice inspired by the theme of conviviality. The curved bar increases the convivial feeling and was designed so that the chef could prepare some plates there, in view of patrons — providing an appealing touch of “theater.” The tops of the bar and tables are onyx, and the maître d’s stand is clad in this same translucent material. The bar’s recessed front is surfaced with mother-of-pearl tiles. Colors throughout the restaurant are drawn from nature and associated with the exquisitely prepared seafood served — tones of driftwood, sand, and water. Screens of teakwood blocks, placed as backdrops around the perimeter, establish a kinship with the ceilings and contrast subtly with the whites and off-whites in the foreground. Scrims installed at the dining area windows, woven of fabric strips, dried vines, and metallic threads, modulate the view to the busy street outside and pick up light from the base of the wall. Screens of vertical, twisted aluminum strips with polished leading edges and a random brushed finish on their two broad faces, also up-lighted, produce a subtle shimmer. Where these occur along walls, they’re backed by fabric-covered acoustically absorptive panels. The custom-designed carpet combines silvery grays and pale browns in a curvilinear pattern of “pools.” Even the white onyx on some key surfaces includes subtle light brown veining. The painting at the far end of the dining room, “Deep Water No. 1” by Ran Ortner, was not commissioned for the space, but was a fortuitous find, perfectly dimensioned for its position here. As in many spaces designed by Bentel & Bentel, this work of architectural scale creates a window, in effect, on a solid wall.

Restaurant location at corner of mid-block passage with LeWitt murals — entrance canopy at left

Early sketch of lounge with curved bar and art wall at rear of space

Lounge area with bar, architect-designed low seating, screen at windows of twisted aluminum strips

Bar area designed for conviviality, aluminum strips screening entry vestibule

Dining room under pre-existing teak ceiling complemented by new screen of teakwood blocks

6,000 sq ft/145 seats

1 Entry 2 Greeter 3 Casual Dining 4 Bar 5 Gueridon

6 Dining 7 Wine Room

C Coats T Toilets KIT Kitchen

Tables with curved banquettes, backed by teakwood screens

Details of screens — one of teakwood blocks, one of twisted aluminum strips, backed here by acoustic fabric

Architect-designed seating and handbag stand

Banquette backs that can form armrests

Cheese cart and architects’ sketches for it

Painting “Deep Water No. 1” by Ran Ortner as backdrop for dining on seafood Screen woven of fabric, vines, and metallic threads — uplighted — modulating view of street

Toku Manhasset, New York

Toku is a rare demonstration of Bentel & Bentel's restaurant design skills in a suburban setting. It is situated on Long Island's affluent North Shore, in the Americana open-air shopping center, a locus of luxury shops that includes such internationally known retailers as Tiffany, Cartier, Hermes, Ralph Lauren, Prada, and Louis Vuitton. Offering a distinctive Pan-Asian menu, Toku meets a need at the Americana for a restaurant appealing to affluent daytime shoppers, while offering evening dining to residents of nearby communities. Toku also presented the Bentels with an unusual opportunity to design a prominent front for the single-story structure housing it. The architects ingeniously capitalized on the fact that this façade faces north — thus getting virtually no sunlight — countering this lack by extending the front vertically with a tall light monitor. They faced this upper surface with striped translucent glass, which is back-lighted through clear glass behind it to produce a striking play of sunlight and shadow — replaced after sundown with lantern-like illumination. While the Americana is no ordinary shopping environment, the space available for Toku presented the spatial constraints typical of restaurants located in rows of shops. Its footprint is narrow and, in this case, exceptionally deep. This tunnel-like expanse has been divided into a series of dining areas that flow seamlessly from the front to the rear without sacrificing the intimacy of each. An entry corridor, defined by bronze mesh curtains, leads patrons to a greeter desk just beyond the up-front bar. In the next area to the rear, a sushi bar lends its identity to a casual dining area. A more spacious dining area deeper into the space features a "lantern" of fabric hanging below a circular skylight, offering sunshine by day and a diffused overhead glow in the evening. All lighting throughout is supplied indirectly from hidden sources — or by the wall- mounted candles first seen in the entry passage. Materials are limited to those of neutral blacks, whites, and earth tones. Porcelain-white stretched PVC panels on areas of the ceiling serve, as in several other restaurants by the firm, to mitigate the low ceiling height with soft reflections. Post-and-beam frames of ebonized oak — recalling historical East Asian architecture — delineate dining alcoves and an area at the far end of the space that can be closed off for private parties. A few well-chosen works of art and craft underscore the identity of Toku's various zones. At the bar, up front, niches occupied by traditional paper lanterns alternate playfully with TV screens, and wooden monastery bells hang above the sushi bar. At the very end of the long space is a wood Buddha head seeming to levitate against the black slate rear wall.

Entrance front, with sun back-lighting glazed upper wall

Main dining area, with fabric "lantern" suspended under dome

1 Entry 2 Greeter 3 Casual Dining 4 Bar 5 Sushi Bar 6 Artwork 7 Dining 8 Private Dining Room 9 Buddha Head 10 Wooden Monastery Bells 11 Waiter Station

C Coats T Toilets KIT Kitchen

5,000 sq ft/190 seats

Entry passage between slate wall and bronze mesh curtain; onyx-topped bar, flat screens amid lanterns Sushi bar, wooden temple bells above; ceiling panels of porcelain-white stretched PVC defining areas

Above and opposite: rearmost area that can be closed off for private dining

Booths set off by ebonized oak framing, with white leather banquettes

Ground Café – Yale New Haven, Connecticut

Ground Café brightens a part of the Yale University campus that is well populated daily but had been lacking in public amenities. The new oasis is tucked into the ground floor of the Becton Center, a ruggedly handsome poured concrete structure designed by Marcel Breuer and completed in 1970 for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Besides offering a convenient and congenial setting for coffee, pastries, and light meals, the café was intended to encourage interaction among faculty and students of the engineering school — along with those from other Yale departments. In adapting a former seminar room on the building's street floor, the architects first expanded it by a third of its original area. The existing aluminum-framed glass wall that had been tucked behind the structural columns was replicated in an extension that gives the café visibility from the street, while still being sheltered under the overhang of the upper floors. Inside the café, the architects did not entirely conceal the rough-textured cast-in-place concrete enclosure of the former seminar room, so integral to the architecture of the building. But they gave the space a richer, more intimate quality — and improved acoustics — by layering a palette of walnut planks and perforated aluminum sheets over its walls and ceiling, leaving some of the original textured concrete visible. The variegated bluestone floor had existed here — inside and out — and new stone was obtained from the original quarry for the room extension and a wainscot along one wall. In a bolder move to enhance the cafe's appeal, the design incorporates a 23,000-diode LED "digital canvas" rising up one wall and across the ceiling, a display that is visible to passersby through the new glazed wall. The installation was inspired by the products of research going on in the Becton Center itself, which the architects found "not only computational, but visual — and beautifully so." The installation makes these digital images visible not just to students and staff of that building, but to the Yale community at large, "manifesting the connection between science and art." Although the programmable LED device originated to display work of the engineering school's researchers, its administration soon agreed to make its programming available to the university's entire faculty and student body, underscoring the idea that the café was intended as a link between the school and the rest of Yale.

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