Club 432 New York, New York
As the world's tallest residential tower was about to rise at 432 Park Avenue, Bentel & Bentel were commissioned to design a suite of resident amenities on the structure's sixth floor. The project encompasses 7,000 square feet of interior space and 5,000 square feet of roof terrace. Developer Harry Macklowe invited the architects to help draft the program for this space and to design the interiors and terrace. The two major divisions of the interior are intended to meet the daily needs of residents — the dining room offering regular food service and the lounge accommodating such activities as cocktail and tea service, music, or simply socializing. For special occasions, both interiors plus the terrace are to be combined as one coordinated venue. The noble proportions of the two principal volumes here — 22.5 feet by 80 feet in floor area, 25 feet high, with 10-foot-square areas of glass framed by massive concrete structural members — presented Bentel & Bentel with unusual opportunities and challenges. These impressive dimensions could seem overwhelming for activities that often call for a feeling of intimacy. Among the elements that deal with this spatial challenge, the most prominent are the chandeliers. They are not the conventional decorative sources of light, but objects of a scale and volume that become part of the architecture, as essential to the experience of the space as the walls and the floors. In both main rooms, these suspended creations allow residents to understand their relationship to the rooms along both their long axes and in the dimensions between floor and ceiling. In the lounge, two very tall chandeliers with the sparkle of lead crystal hang down to a level in proportion to human occupants, and they imply the existence of two volumes of more comfortable scale. On the dining side, the suspended lighting forms a horizontal plane to keep the extra-tall space from just trailing off into darkness. It is also a conscious homage to the Richard Lippold sculpture over the bar at the landmark Four Seasons Restaurant nearby. The club design also acknowledges its unique setting within the tower shaped by Rafael Viñoly Architects. Bentel & Bentel strove to exhibit a geometrical discipline and restrained color palette characteristic of the structure as a whole. To this end, they have employed a variety of contrasting but complementary materials — reflective black and white marble on the lobby floor, subtly echoed in earth-toned carpet elsewhere, sparkling crystal in some chandeliers, softly glowing glass in others, walls of suede in the dining room, white oak in the lounge, ceilings clad with mirrored metal and oak panels — each material exhibiting its own color, finish, and cadence of joints.
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