INTERNATIONAL CULINARY CENTER
LOCATION: NEW YORK, NY
AREA: 10,000 SF
STATUS: COMPLETED 2011
We designed the new fifth floor for the International Culinary Center (formerly the French Culinary Institute), a venerable Soho-based cooking school. The project included a new event space with a wine room and bar looking onto Broadway, a new storeroom serving the school’s five floors, and two new teaching kitchens. Glazed internal openings allow through-floor views from Crosby to Broadway, giving all occupants access to daylight. Typical back-of-house spaces like the storeroom are open to view and celebrated as integral to the students’ education.
A rail of stainless steel and mesquite butcher block runs throughout the floor, serving as a guardrail for the school’s ubiquitous steel transportation carts that cause serious damage to unprotected walls; we chose the butcher block in a nod to the chopping skills that all the students learn in their training. The rail expands to become a textured floor to ceiling partition in the reception lobby.