Projects: Fine Dining
Mark McMenamin -- Interior Design, 12/1/2011 2:00:00 AM
Winner: Esrawe Studio and Rojkind Arquitectos
Project: Toritori
Location: Mexico City
From the street in a residential neighborhood, there's virtually no sign of Tori Tori, a flourishing Japanese restaurant. That's because three plant walls wrap the property, hedgelike. Step through a discreet doorway, however, and you find yourself on a dining terrace outside the restaurant building, a converted 6,700-square-foot house rendered unrecognizable by a flamboyant brise soleil. Michel Rojkind built it with two self-supporting layers of steel plate, CNC-cut into shapes as intertwining as the ivy.
A double-height reception area brings guests to a pair of steel staircases that ascend to Rojkind and Héctor Esrawe's main dining room, lounge, and tearoom. The tearoom, sparingly furnished with green tables in lacquered MDF and painted iron, is clad in Zimbabwe wood except for the far end, which is floor-to-ceiling foliage. A word of warning for the restrooms: The washbasins, set on cantilevered oak stands, line up in full view of the huge windows.
Merit: Aidlin Darling Design
Project: Bar Agricole
Location: San Francisco
Using concrete, oak, and glass as foils for one another, a reinvented warehouse from 1912 walks a delicate line between tough and inviting.
Merit: Stephanie Goto
Project: Maritime Parc
Location: Jersey City
A monofilament chandelier, descending through the center of a stairwell, establishes a
through-line connecting three levels of nautical-chic appointments.
Merit: Department of Architecture Co.
Project: Edge
Location: Pattaya, Thailand
The Hilton Pattaya hotel's Gulf of Thailand views inspired underwater forms, notably the dining room's teak screens cut to resemble a type of soft coral.
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