Pastel
winner of the world luxury restaurant awards luxury brasserie continent category.
winner of the world luxury restaurant awards global restaurant of the year 2017 luxury interior design/architecture.
winner of the idea-tops award for 2014 best design of a dining space.
Pastel is Baranowitz + Kronenberg’s new brasserie on Tel Aviv’s cultural block, located at the new wing of Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
The design of the new wing by Preston Scott Cohen has already conquered the media and social networks, staring its daring architecture around the globe. Cohen’s work joins the ever growing list of museums (Guggenheim Bilbo, Maxi Rome etc’) that challenge the threesome relationship between art, display space and Place.
This is the context into which Baranowitz + Kronenberg steps to develop a 400 meters square skeletal empty space placed at the ground level of the edifice facing the museum’s sculpture garden and its grove of eucalyptus trees; an exclusive setting for a restaurant unlike any other in the city.
Yet Pastel is first and foremost a city restaurant not a museum restaurant. Privileged by a complete freedom from the opening hours of the museum Pastel responds to the pulses of the city and introduces a unique social venue for the heart of Tel Aviv’s Cultural center.
Entrance to Pastel is via a public piazza flanking the museum compound and the visiting public is requested to step outside the museum and cross over to Pastel through the sculpture garden.
Baranowitz + Kronenberg developed an indigenous narrative for Pastel inspired by two opposite worlds; the world of “new and next” represented by the hyper geometric architecture of the new wing and the world of The Brasserie – an almost two centuries old culinary and socializing bastion of the western world.
Baranowitz + Kronenberg juxtaposes these two worlds in the most straight forward way. The dynamic envelop of the new wing is sucked into the space to become the interior envelop of Pastel while the Brasserie world seems to have landed out of a time machine right in the center of the space.
Each of the worlds jealously clings to its DNA, both unaware of the beautiful friendship which is bound to begin between them…..
The world of “new and next” is represented by a white and vigorous geometry clouding Pastel with endless shades of white.The south – east light bounces on the grey stone flooring and renders the ceiling with a soft appearance and a welcoming air, a must have mood for socializing.
The Brasserie world on the other hand is the embodiment of its classics; booth seating, crystal chandeliers, voluptuous marble tops, Thonet chairs which all come in Bordeaux color tone placed on top of a herring- bone wood platform, an island of sorts evoking different times and places.
At the very far end of Pastel a Study was developed shadowed only by a wine library where even large groups of people can share a sense of privacy under the cloudy geometry.
The dinning bar celebrates the views to the terrace and the sculpture garden as much as those of the interior scene. All guests face the view through a declining section of the seating arrangement.
The marble tops serve both the dinners and the bar team blurring the borders between them and motivating unexpected open-minded conversations with the team behind the counter.
Pastel holds a secret venue. Within its envelop, an “alcohol beat box” is concealed from the eyes of the guests. A box in a box, pumping high rates of alcohol and sound dbs. This Mini-bar has a life of its own which abides to a different biological clock. It is destined for the city’s insiders, for those who live the long nights. An inconspicuous acoustic door leads into the mini-bar transcending the culinary world into the realm of the unexpected and of alcohol driven experience.
The mini-bar is designed as small scale cathedral. Its altar bears the lowest section of the space, programmed to build up high pressure and intensify the experience around the 360 degrees bar. A wild alcohol “ cross” floats in mid air marking the reason for all to be there. Low seating is encouraged under the high section of the space with the intention of making the late nighters mix, mingle and connect.
The Bordeaux color of the space intensifies the alcoholic all-hours scene.
The sculpture garden terrace is a unique all-year venue which leverages Pastel as an iconic social hub for the free flow of energies, hanging out and the buzzing energies supported by an open skies bar and a 12 meters long galvanized steel table where partying is only imminent.
