by: AIA New York
Recipe for a Room: A Design Contest, organized by the AIANY Interiors Committee to benefit the New York City Restaurant Employee Relief Fund, named the competition’s audience favorite and judges’ favorite during a live webinar last week on Thursday, August 27. The student-mentor team comprised of Camille Lanier, a student at Columbia University, and David Mann, AIA, Founder, MR Architecture + Decor, won both honors for their whimsical miniature restaurant, Ms. Nori’s. The winning concept is constructed largely from seaweed and serves up seaweed-based foods such as pasta to create forms evocative of the sea.
Recipe for a Room asked local architecture students, paired with architect mentors, to design small-scale edible rooms to celebrate food as a design medium while financially assisting restaurant owners in need. All registration income generated by the event will go to the New York City Restaurant Employee Relief Fund, developed by ROAR and Robin Hood to support the restaurant industry individuals facing unprecedented economic hardship as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The competition was juried by Kierin Baldwin, Pastry Chef Instructor, International Culinary Center; Augusta Barone, architect and foodie; and David Leven, FAIA, Founder and Partner, LEVENBETTS, and Board Director, AIA New York. “The material consistency combined with space making that envelopes diners and staff alike is very nice in the scheme,” says Leven of the winning design by Lanier and Mann. “The ability for staff and diners to occupy the same space but to not face one another is an important component in the COVID-19 response… Finally, the aesthetics and expressive qualities in the scheme are very beautiful and consistent.”
The jury and audience also called out a few unofficial runners up among the nine competing teams:
- Team 1: Heart of the City’s bodega evokes a dense New York that will return in short order. The design language aligns nicely with what we know to be the neighborhood bodega experience. The bodega IS the heart of New York City
- Team 2: The Noodle Niche uses the engineering of the noodle, which can be translated into so many building materials and processes, to make a very nice compartmentalized scheme.
- Team 8: Restoration/Reformation’s lily pads on ice was the most esthetically beautiful scheme of the event.
- Team 9: Veggie Tailor’s innovates with the ideas of pouring and casting using high and low technologies to make a very nice flexible and very orange project.
Team 1: Alexandra Checa, City University of New York, and Jessica Culver, Interior Designer, Woods Bagot
Team 2: Alexandra Panichella, New York Institute of Technology, and Barry Richards, RA, Principal, Rockwell Group
Team 3: Camille Lanier, Columbia University, and David Mann, AIA, Founder, MR Architecture + Decor
Team 4: Coleman Downing, City University of New York, and Diana Revkin, Assoc. AIA., TPG Architecture LLP
Team 5: Giuliana Vaccarino Gearty, City University of New York, and Peter Miller, AIA, LEED AP, Co-Founder and Partner, Palette Architecture PLLC, Co-Chair, AIA New York Cultural Facilities Committee
Team 6: Jack Li, City University of New York, and Krista Ninivaggi, Founder, K&CO
Team 7: Kaeli Alika Streeter, Columbia University, and Kyle Spence, Founder, The Bak Lab
Team 8: Lauren Scott, Columbia University, and Rosalind Tsang, AIA, LEED GA, Advisory Board, AIANY Women in Architecture Committee
Team 9: Pedro Cruz, City University of New York, and Yutaka Takiura, AIA, Founder, The Design Architecture