Blooms
One of the standout features of our project Born & Raised, the high-end steakhouse in Little Italy, is the wooden blooms that punctuate the dining room. These massive yet intricate pieces were created out of necessity, as the building had to be retrofitted to add the second level bar, leaving unsightly brackets in the main dining room. Our wooden blooms were designed to cover the structural supports.
With the ceiling being so low, we needed something unusual and beautiful to help the room open up. The curve of the blooms keeps the eye from fixating on the low ceiling and informed the curvilinear design of the entire dining space. Various models were explored in Sketchup until we found a nice balance of classic features with a modern take.
The final bloom engineered solution manifested like an Erector Set with the largest spans of wood and lowest number of fins in order to keep the blooms as circular as possible. They were built in upside-down halves and took up the entire shop floor of our studio, which looked like a scene out of Alice in Wonderland. Most people assume the blooms were just a design feature, but, in fact, the design stemmed from function, from the layout to hiding the mechanical equipment and structural support. The time spent planning paid off in a fast fabrication as each bloom only took one day to install.