AvroKO Designs Zou Zou's Restaurant in Manhattan

Table Of Content

• Hollywood puppet theatre becomes Chief LA members' club
• Eight chocolate-brown interiors that look good enough to eat
• AvroKO Celebrates Two Decades of Bold Hospitable Thinking
• In Conversation: IIDA Chats with AvroKO's Chief Creative Officer Nick Solomon
• Eight home interiors where mezzanines maximise usable space
• Barn-like house

The entrance to the hotel—a former Le Méridien that’s now part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection—was reconfigured in a way that plays up the architecture’s powerful presence without being imposing. The new porte-cochère, for instance, layers warm wood fins onto the concrete exterior. Here, custom column lights and a brass patina ceiling cove join stone pavers to set a dramatic mood. During COVID, the partners were reminded of their early days, when their office was located just above PUBLIC. “We came from this intertwined ecosystem, and as we got bigger, we kind of went away from it. Now, they are imagining a more malleable, multi-pronged office culture “centered on an integrated bar experience or collaborative areas versus just rows of desks,” Harris adds.

Hollywood puppet theatre becomes Chief LA members' club

AvroKO Designs the Jay Hotel in San Francisco - Hospitality Design

AvroKO Designs the Jay Hotel in San Francisco.

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The penthouse living room boasts lighting that references the late looped-wire artist Ruth Asawa. News from Dezeen Events Guide, a listings guide covering the leading design-related events taking place around the world. Sent every Tuesday and containing a selection of the most important news highlights. Sent every Thursday and featuring a selection of the best reader comments and most talked-about stories. "The designers also brought in elements of dansaekhwa, or the repetition of action which is known to stabilise and restore those in its presence," AvroKO said.

Eight chocolate-brown interiors that look good enough to eat

“We were tasked with a significant modernization makeover, yet needed to preserve the original Spanish Revival–inspired architecture,” explains Greg Bradshaw, principal at AvroKO, the architecture and interior design firm that spearheaded the 190,000-square-foot renovation project in the heart of Scottsdale’s Old Town district. Likewise, so are the Bull & Bear restaurant (seating 80), The Loft bar, (seating 70), and the intimate Champagne bar (seating 34), found on floors 55 through 57 respectively. Nearly a decade ago BUILD sat down with three of AvroKO’s four partners at their then recently opened Gotham West Market in Manhattan. At that time, their work tackled everything from architecture and furniture to graphics and fashion.

AvroKO Celebrates Two Decades of Bold Hospitable Thinking

The Jay Hotel pays homage to John Portman's San Francisco - Wallpaper*

The Jay Hotel pays homage to John Portman's San Francisco.

Posted: Mon, 04 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

An open kitchen anchored by a wood-fired oven acts the nucleus of Zou Zou’s as it spans one side of the interior, mirrored by the bar on the opposite side of the space. Shuttered for a three-year renovation, the Waldorf Astoria New York is expected to reopen in 2020. Since 2008, Hilton has added 30 properties to the Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts umbrella. Rapid expansion means another 20 are underway, all planned to seduce the five-star hospitality market with the most exclusive addresses, targeted programming, and, of course, thoughtful design. Syncing the interior architecture meant reducing rectilinear or symmetrical lines, which would have clashed with the modern building; instead, curves dominate. One of the more prominent Art Deco elements is an arched promenade connecting two sides of seating situated along the facade in the 110-seat Brasserie restaurant, also on the 16th floor.

Lighting is also based on the shapes and textures of Korean jewellery, and decorative hairpins called binyeo. Interlocking timber beams across the ceiling and walls mimic those used to construct the hanok, while gridded partitions echo the windows and screens found inside. The foursome met at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where Bradshaw and Farmerie were on the architecture track and Harris and O’Neal were studying art. AvroKO (a mash-up of Avro Design and KO Media Studios, the companies they ran before joining forces) was founded in 2001, after the friends reunited in New York.

London's best home renovations 2024

It gets them back to their “create as a collective” value, focusing on the happiness of their team while also creating memorable moments for their clients. Under this umbrella, the partners are cultivating the community-driven Hospitable Living concept, a fusion of residential, guest, and member programming anchored by F&B outlets. Contrasting patterns and textures define the 75-seat restaurant, with vibrant blue and green tiling installed alongside dark woods below soaring, arched ceilings clad with wood paneling. Off-white plaster serves as the backdrop for wrought iron light fixtures as well.

A mélange of custom furniture and vintage finds make up the reception lobby and coffee bar. The third-floor terrace might be the property’s best ambassador for making Patunoff’s vision for the Jay a reality. “Everyone identified this outdoor space as [a great] opportunity for San Francisco,” Bradshaw says. The rooftop venue extends the interior story to the open air, with an impressive bar made of concrete and sculptural tiles, plush sofas and seating vignettes, sleek firepits, and lush landscaping with sculptural aloes, cacti, and other native California plants. The conference and meeting space on the second floor is where Caserta’s fashion influence is felt most keenly, with colors and patterns suggestive of the clothes she might have sold from her Mnasidika boutique in Haight-Ashbury. One room is wrapped in blue and red polka dots, for example, while the gold room boasts warm mustard accents.

Eight home interiors where mezzanines maximise usable space

In the Champagne Bar, which we access by pressing an intricately carved wooden sculpture activating a hidden door, I spot a vintage leather rocking chair, wood carvings from local Thai artisans, and custom half-moon sectional sofas expansive enough to encourage interaction with strangers. There are also vintage paint tools—tins filled with brushes, tool carousels, kits of pastels, pencils, and watercolors, and bottles of tinted-glass inkwells. “The dirty process of creation is really beautiful,” says Harris, who studied art—some of the framed pieces on walls are works of his own along with AvroKO partners Kristina O'Neal, Adam Farmerie, and Greg Bradshaw. The 360 guestrooms, meanwhile, feature simplified echoes of the sharp angles and bold patterns found elsewhere. Slatted wooden room dividers and closet doors were inspired by the building’s façade; custom carpet shows off oversized shapes with gentle curves and texture to soften the Brutalist language.

“If you think sideways about your main business and what else you’re interested in, even if it doesn’t succeed, it can lead to something successful,” Harris says. Thai history also manifests in a dramatic chandelier, this time in the form of more than 800 hand-cast glass feathers, which represent a giant, mythical birdlike creature, the Garuda. According to Hindu and Buddhist legend, the bird spends eternity killing its archenemy, the snakelike Nagas (whose form manifests in the chandelier's carved wooden serpentine shapes). Several of these are scattered around the glass-wrapped Peacock Alley, where up to 70 patrons can while away air-conditioned afternoons over tea and assorted pastries. The restaurant takes cues from hotel lounges of the past, with a sophisticated design centered around wood pendants suspended from a ceiling installation.

The firm's recent projects have included a members' club in Chicago and an eatery and entertainment space in Nashville. Among these bespoke designs are pendants suspended straight above the tables, bead-like sconces and chandeliers that arc out from a central column. From the wide array of plantings, to the tropical landscapes depicted in vintage artwork, to wallpaper bursting with palm leafs, greenery abounds. Calling to mind prewar apartments, the New York clubhouse in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, for example, features decorative trim moldings and a penthouse amplifying the views of surrounding mansard roofs. The West Hollywood iteration channels its past as a puppet theater and mixes a preserved wall of celebrity signatures dating from the 1940s with an olive tree-shaded courtyard. In Chicago, an abundance of exposed wood honors Fulton Market’s warehouse roots.

Asawa’s sensibilities loom large via the color scheme and various style details of speakers, art books, lamps, and locally made vases. The open kitchen at the Front Room restaurant at the Waldorf Astoria Bangkok with interior design by André Fu, principal of design studio AFSO. Custom rattan and wicker furnishings paired with wood accents create a warm, honey-hued backdrop for a design theme Bradshaw sums up as a “mash-up of Bauhaus’ian and Cuban details and layers” – think a Havana front porch with a splash of old-world glamour. Curved brass Bauhaus-inspired chandeliers are paired with rattan settees and, as an unexpected standout feature, cane screens. Woven in fresh, amber-hued cane in a hexagonal design, these are used both as unexpected wall accents and spatial dividers throughout.

With 171 rooms and suites, two restaurants, and a lounge by Fu, the 430,000-square-foot property in the Magnolias Ratchadamri Boulevard development has been seven years in the making. The hotel occupies levels six through 16 and 55 through 57 of a 60-story tower (which also includes 316 luxury apartments) that a team of architects from Gensler, DI Designs, and the Beaumont Partners conceived as the three-dimensional petal of a magnolia flower. A 2014 addition to Bangkok’s skyline, the tower evokes movement thanks to the twist on its uppermost floors. Here, at the hotel’s three highest levels, are an additional restaurant and two bars by New York–based design firm AvroKO. It’s impressive that the quartet has not only endured for two decades but that the partners remain a united front—and still ambitious as ever—especially when considering they’ve done so amid tremendous growth.

Between the panels Lindsay Kaplan appears on and the advice-dispensing coffee dates she agrees to, the cofounder of Chief, the exclusive network that arms C-suite women with tailored guidance and resources, sometimes marvels at her path to leadership. The Jay’s top-floor penthouse suite, dubbed the Nest, spans 1,660 square feet. AvroKo, a studio that focuses on hospitality, completed Oiji Mi, an upscale Korean dining spot in the Flatiron District – an area once home to over 100 social clubs during the Gilded Age. In the Canal Club restaurant, where cuisine, appropriately, has a Cuban twist, arched banquettes are upholstered in a shimming gold velvet—a challenging material for a heavy-traffic environment. Patience paid off, and the result is both “stain and rub resistant—not typical for that fabric form,” notes AvroKO principal Kristina O’Neal. The material palette references “Chief’s values of fortitude, belonging, and longevity.

Saturated walls are balanced by the warmth of plush upholstery and broken-in leather, creating an approachability with an overall style that is fresh and enduring,” says Danielle Gray, senior designer at AvroKO. “There are subtle, almost covert, differences in each location that reflect something essential about each city. That lack was the impetus behind Chief, a space for women who are CEOs or rising vice presidents. Membership is open in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, with some 4,000 members (35 percent identify as BIPOC) from companies like Netflix and Nike. A waitlist of more than 8,000 women across the globe underscores the necessity of the vision. The rooftop bar offers comfortable seating, native California plants, and unparalleled city views.