Bar / Lounge

Best of Year 2009 Winner: Belzberg Architects

Best of Year -- Interior Design, 12/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

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Best of Year > 2009 > Project Design > Bar / Lounge

Best of Year Winner, Bar / Lounge: Belzberg Architects: The Conga Room, Los Angeles, CA
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The Conga Room is for salsa, rumba, anything with Latin roots. To give the club its own rhythm, Hagy Belzberg had to ensure that the two-level, 14,000-square-foot space resembled more than just a dance floor with a restaurant and four bars attached—even if one those bars, enclosed in red trelliswork, does happen to be by artist Jorge Pardo. Belzberg turned to color and pattern to make his point. Descending through a cutout in the ceiling of the ground-level entry is a glowing stalactite suspended from a sculptural canopy that spreads out across the ceiling of the lobby and dance floor upstairs. The stalactite's elongated panels, each a unique shape in white-painted MDF, evolve into a three-dimensional floral pattern overhead. "It's the single unifying element," he says, "above a sea of dancers."

CORY TAYLOR; ANDREW ATWOOD; LAUREN ZUZACK; CARINA BIEN-WILLNER; KELLY BAIR; BILL BOWEN; DAVID CHEUNG; DAN RENTCH; BARRY GARTIN; BROCK DESMIT: PROJECT TEAM.

Best of Year Merit Awards, Bar / Lounge

Bluarch Architecture + Interiors: Greenhouse Nightclub, New York, NY
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On the walls and part of the ceiling of this eco-friendly nightclub, tufts of faux boxwood protrude between small lacquered or vinyl-covered disks fitted with throbbing, color-changing LEDs.

II by IV Design Associates Inc.: Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY

Throughout the Legends Suite Club and Dugout Lounges, NYY Steak restaurant, and banquet and conference center, the baseball team's trademark navy blue rules—along with polished concrete, galvanized steel, and backlit photomurals.

Isay Weinfeld: Las Piedras Fasano Hotel Bar, Camiño Egusguiza, Punta del Este, Uruguay

With custom wooden seating and hair-on hide upholstery, gaucho charm pervades a hotel bar housed in an existing stone building.