Condé Nast Cafeteria. The publishing house Condé Nast entrusts Gehry with the cafeteria project for his new corporate headquarters due to his prestige and his spatial search, regarding the design itself, if the program lets him work freely so that Gehry can carry out a job within his style.
Summary
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- 1 Situation
- 2 Concept
- 3 Spaces
- 4 Structure and Materials
- 5 Plans
- 6 Photo gallery
- 7 Sources
Situation
The cafeteria is located in the new corporate headquarters of the Condé Nast publishing house, a building that was designed by Fox & Fowle and is located at number 4 New York Times Square in the heart of Manhattan, a commercial point of reference for the city.
The cafeteria is located on the fourth floor of the building, occupying approximately one third of the floor. The rest of the floor has offices and also an auditorium at one end, the confectionery environment is purely corporate and with a completely different image from that presented by this place.
Access to the cafeteria is through a corridor that surrounds the entire space that acts as an intermediary point between the environment and the central space, through this corridor access can be made from multiple points.
Concept
There is no doubt that Gehry is an Architect capable of building anything, which is why he was sought out to give a new approach to the idea of what a cafeteria for a corporate building should be.
With a more than positive result, he looks for the space to change the shape of the company culture; first of all enter the fight for food and then enter an open banquet free of formalities.
Gehry has produced an informality that encourages casual encounters of friendship, also fosters romanticism, in her search unfreezes the cold social climate that is usually generated in this type of space.
Spaces
The cafeteria has space for 260 diners, includes a main dining room, an office and four private feeders.
The main dining room is organized so that it can provide a variety of seating arrangements creating an atmosphere that is both intimate and open, custom designed to accommodate a number of 4-6 people in the cabins. Each cabin is distributed along the perimeter walls. The walls undulate in response to the geometry and general configuration of the cabins.
Other additional booths are located on a raised platform bounded by translucent curved panels in the center of the main dining room, loose tables with their respective chairs are distributed throughout this place, all designed in the studio. The office (servery), is located adjacent to the main dining area, is a fully equipped facility where all the variety of dishes that the place has is offered in a functional way.
The four private dining rooms are located on the same level as the main and the office, but they form separate and individual spaces for lunches and special presentations. Translucent curved panels articulate the east wall of each dining room, providing natural light to all of these.
These dining rooms have audiovisual equipment due to their use for special occasions, three of these dining rooms have mobile partitions, allowing a wide variety of spatial configurations according to the occasion and need.
Structure and Materials
Structurally, the architect had no business since the design of the space was only proposed to him on an already built building.
The walls of the booths in the main dining room are lined with perforated blue Titanium panels that include acoustic insulation to absorb the sound produced on site.
The curved panels of the reserved areas are made of transparent glass , the floor is a plywood with an ash finish, while the ceiling is covered, like the partitions, by perforated panels in blue Titanium , tuning in.
The office has curvilinear stainless steel countertops with “angel hair” finish, blue Titanium walls and canopies, ash wood floor and ceiling. All these materials are to enhance the sculptural and aesthetic character of the main dining room.
The four private dining rooms feature ash plywood walls, floor, and ceiling with clear glass paneling.
