Tadao Ando Architects & Associates

Morimoto, New York

Annie Block -- Interior Design, 12/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Philadelphia and Tokyo converge in New York at Morimoto, Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto's restaurant. The sequel to the original Morimoto in the City of Brotherly Love, this two-level 13,000-square-foot spectacle represents the first Big Apple foray for both restaurateur Stephen Starr and architect Tadao Ando. At one end of the blackened-steel facade, the 50-foot-wide arched entry is draped with a fish-roe red PVC curtain. Inside, a rippling canvas-and-fiberglass ceiling, a resin-topped bar, an LED-lit wall of 17,400 half-liter plastic water bottles, and beechwood furniture by Ross Lovegrove accompany Ando's signature concrete.

Merit

Craftsteak, New York

DESIGN Bentel & Bentel Architects/Planners.

STANDOUT An iroko-clad wall backs a painting of the High Line, which runs past this former Nabisco bakery.

Gilt, New York

DESIGN Patrick Jouin.

STANDOUT A historic interior meets a Corian-topped bar and a fiberglass shell covered in stretched polyester and lit by LEDs.

Social Hollywood, Los Angeles

DESIGN Zeff Design.

STANDOUT A 350-year-old Moroccan alabaster lioness guards the lounge, where steel-framed vitrines display ceramics, also from Morocco.