Craft Los Angeles Los Angeles, California
In this fourth of the six Craft restaurants Bentel & Bentel designed for chef Tom Colicchio, they again used a limited set of materials and the simplest craftsmanship to relate the architecture to his approach to cooking. Here, as elsewhere, he applies the highest form of uncomplicated craft to explore the full flavor of each farm-raised ingredient and serves each one unadorned on its separate plate, to be shared by all at the table. The parameters of the plan here specified a total of 275 seats, including a 40-seat private dining room and a 75-seat outdoor terrace, supported by a 3,500-square-foot kitchen and a 1,000-bottle wine case. Their design approach, here as elsewhere, drew on the specific context, which in Los Angeles was radically different from the 19 th -century urban fabric of the original Craft in New York. Here, the restaurant occupies a new one-story aluminum-and-glass building, with a terrace overlooking a lushly planted park at the center of the recently refurbished Century City office and cultural superblock. The building's muscularly curved floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlooks the terrace and dominates the interior. Responding to the sinuous plan of this wall, the architects rotated its curve vertically to form continuous fabric-covered panels that swath the ceiling and one wall of the main dining room. Two straight vertical planes set perpendicular to each other — a standing-seam bronze partition and a blackened steel and glass wine case — help define the major interior program areas of bar, main dining, and private dining rooms. The building's columns, clad in sandblasted bronze plate, punctuate the patrons' experience throughout the restaurant, while recalling the hefty columns in the original New York Craft and its namesakes in other cities. The sensual appreciation of these materials is heightened by their contrasts: taut fabric-clad panels against roughened bronze column surfaces, the crisp transparency of the wine rack balanced by the old-growth oak flooring and custom-designed teak and walnut millwork used both inside and outside. Throughout, all furnishings and fittings were designed by the architects to celebrate their materials and the elegantly simple craftsmanship of assembling them. These materials are intentionally left unprotected to encourage variations in texture and color that will be induced by age and use.
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