Michael Jordan’s The Steakhouse
Agency
Rockwell Group
Practice Area
Client
Michael Jordan/Peter & Penny Glazier
Industry
Project Vision
With Michael Jordan, restaurateurs Peter and Penny Glazier opened a new restaurant overlooking the main concourse at Grand Central Terminal. A series of screen walls define different areas and mediate between the scale of the terminal and that of the restaurant. A tall curved, wood wall, crowned with a dramatically lit metal leaf cornice, is inspired by the Beaux Arts design of the terminal, and separates the large dining room from a smaller private dining area. Many details were inspired by the train known as the Twentieth Century Limited (designed in the 1930s), famous for its elegance and streamlined shape. With the use of the finishes, materials, furniture, and lighting, it evokes the romantic age of train travel and the energy of the industrial era long identified with Grand Central Terminal.
Project Details
Key graphic elements extracted from framed detail photographs of the Twentieth Century Limited are echoed in two dimensions in the monumental frieze over the door in three dimensions, at various sizes, on the cornice line surrounding the dining room. This set of design features unifies the whole in a witty manner, emphasizes the character of the larger setting (inside a railroad station), and suggests that the restaurant proper is a segment of that whole complex of ideas (a dining car on that famous train, perhaps). These subtle borrowings from the design of a streamlined train are complemented by the choice of furniture, upholstery, and fittings based on the appointments of the classic dining cars of the 1930s.
Design Team
David Rockwell (Principal in Charge), Linda Casper, Leonard Composano, Masako Fukuoka, Nancy Mah, Olga Rodriguez, Sam Trimble
Design Firm
Rockwell Group
Consultants
Calabrese Development Corp., LaSalle Partners, Williams Jackson & Ewing, Rodney D. Gibble Consulting Engineers, Focus Lighting Inc., Averett Free & Ginsberg, Commercial Kitchen Design, Inc., Goldman Copeland Associates, P.C., Michael Zenreich
Fabricators
Concord Woodwork, Ltd., Jacob Froehich Cabinet Works, Roo Designs, Artco, Souveran, Teddy and Arthur Edelman, Zax, Ulster Carpet, Aztec, Naples Upholstery, Joseph Noble, Shelby Williams, Brunschwig and Fils, Surfacing Arts, Van Vechten, Museum Editions, Waterworks, George Taylor, Clarence House