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Americas - River Oaks
Americas - River Oaks
Houston, TX, United States
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Other Projects by Jordan Mozer and Associates, Ltd.
Americas - River Oaks
Houston, TX, United States
Type
STATUS
Built
YEAR
2012
Photos
JMA was asked to create a 900 square meter fine-dining restaurant with 300+ interior seats and 40+ exterior seats on the upper level of a 1930’s shopping center in Houston for the experimental and award-winning, Nicaraguan-born Chef Michael Cordua.
Chef Cordua is celebrated for brilliantly and irreverently preparing exclusively indigenous South American foodstuffs with European techniques, producing radical contemporary North American dishes.
The cost of the project was only $320 per square foot: this cost includes the cost of all kitchen and bar equipment, the facades, all interior construction, furnishings, finishes and art.
Details
ARCHITECTURAL SOLUTION: The illuminated façade is covered in bronze relief. Inside, guests move through nine terraced spaces, connected by ramps, each with a different personality. The furnishings are loose and many walls move to allow flexibility for parties and to increase the density in some areas on quiet nights. Like Chef Cordua’s dishes, the design tells a uniquely Pan American story with original elements inspired by pre-historic American culture and contemporary urban street culture. Like the Chef’s food, each component is handmade from scratch, produced in America.
WALKING THROUGH: The bronze facade relief doodles are inspired by ancient Peruvian Nazca lines, Inca gold figures and graffiti from Rio De Janeiro, as are door handles, lounge tables and felt murals. Abstracted sculptures inspired by squash, beans and corn, the foundation foods that led to the American Green Revolution, show up throughout the restaurant. The bar, populated with Hoodie barstools (with skinny jeans), offers access to the terrace and the lounge. A raised private dining room (+30cm / +12”) overlooks the bar and may be closed with a moveable felt partition (cowboy-hat material). The lounge is implied by four steel-framed leather-covered sculptures placed between the bar and a terraced dining room. The dining room is organized by a rhythm of 2 meter-tall (7’-0” high) hugging love-seats the color of chocolate or coffee, centered under chandeliers of felt and hand blown Rasta lamps; they share the room with Hoodie chairs, classic leather brasserie booths, and Pitcher Plant lamps made from recycled bronze and inspired by an endangered and carnivorous south American plant. Sculptures celebrate American foodstuffs: beans (in couples and threesomes) and corn (Americans have celebrated with popcorn for 3000 years). A raised Board Room overlooks the dining room, with a wall depicting a New American flag, a Northern heart and a Southern heart embracing near Nicaragua, the chef’s birthplace. Another private room with a chocolate brown wool felt partition also overlooks the dining room. Toilet rooms feature illuminated Soul Window mirrors and cast recycled-bronze sink-bowls. The vestibule leading to the toilet rooms has mirrored walls etched with patterns abstracted from 160-year old six-guns, inventions that allowed Europeans to win Texas from the Comanche. Materials and Components Limited edition, American-couture studio-furnishings were invented for the project. They were produced in Chicago and Houston by artists, craftsmen and factories in just eleven weeks using rapid-prototyping and manufacturing techniques refined by the design team over 25 years and relying equally upon skilled hand-work and digital design and production methods. Materials were chosen to be durable and sustainable, to develop patinas instead of maintenance issues. Elements were sourced and produced near the site, are often recycled and never made in China nor chosen from a catalog. The palette includes regional mahogany, American ebony, recycled cast-bronze and cast-aluminum, recycled fabricated-bronze and oxidized-steel, hand-blown Chicago glass, wool-felt, burlap, saddle leather, upholstery leather, 100% raw cotton denim, integrally-colored, non-combustible resin, Texas granite.
RESEARCH, INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATION: “100 Years of Solitude” by the Nobel prize-winning Columbian magical-realist Gabriel Garcia Marquez; the graffiti of Rio De Janeiro; teenagers in hoodies and skinny jeans; Panamanian Kuna molas (patterns once used for body painting that were translated into embroidered clothing during the Spanish colonization of the area); Texas cowboy clothing, including felt hats, hand-sewn boots, silver belt buckles and 6-guns; “Guns Germs and Steel”, a work of anthropology by biologist Jared Diamond; the Three Sisters (squash, beans and corn), the foodstuffs that allowed the American population to grow to 100 million five hundred years ago; “Blood Meridian” a surreal novel about the war for Texas between the Europeans, Mexicans and Indians by novelist Cormak McCarthy; gold sculptures of the Inca; the book “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” by anthropologist Charles Mann; creatures depicted in the geo-glyphs in the Nazca desert in Southern Peru; “Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanche, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History” by S.C. Gwynne.
Chef Cordua is celebrated for brilliantly and irreverently preparing exclusively indigenous South American foodstuffs with European techniques, producing radical contemporary North American dishes.
The cost of the project was only $320 per square foot: this cost includes the cost of all kitchen and bar equipment, the facades, all interior construction, furnishings, finishes and art.
Details
ARCHITECTURAL SOLUTION: The illuminated façade is covered in bronze relief. Inside, guests move through nine terraced spaces, connected by ramps, each with a different personality. The furnishings are loose and many walls move to allow flexibility for parties and to increase the density in some areas on quiet nights. Like Chef Cordua’s dishes, the design tells a uniquely Pan American story with original elements inspired by pre-historic American culture and contemporary urban street culture. Like the Chef’s food, each component is handmade from scratch, produced in America.
WALKING THROUGH: The bronze facade relief doodles are inspired by ancient Peruvian Nazca lines, Inca gold figures and graffiti from Rio De Janeiro, as are door handles, lounge tables and felt murals. Abstracted sculptures inspired by squash, beans and corn, the foundation foods that led to the American Green Revolution, show up throughout the restaurant. The bar, populated with Hoodie barstools (with skinny jeans), offers access to the terrace and the lounge. A raised private dining room (+30cm / +12”) overlooks the bar and may be closed with a moveable felt partition (cowboy-hat material). The lounge is implied by four steel-framed leather-covered sculptures placed between the bar and a terraced dining room. The dining room is organized by a rhythm of 2 meter-tall (7’-0” high) hugging love-seats the color of chocolate or coffee, centered under chandeliers of felt and hand blown Rasta lamps; they share the room with Hoodie chairs, classic leather brasserie booths, and Pitcher Plant lamps made from recycled bronze and inspired by an endangered and carnivorous south American plant. Sculptures celebrate American foodstuffs: beans (in couples and threesomes) and corn (Americans have celebrated with popcorn for 3000 years). A raised Board Room overlooks the dining room, with a wall depicting a New American flag, a Northern heart and a Southern heart embracing near Nicaragua, the chef’s birthplace. Another private room with a chocolate brown wool felt partition also overlooks the dining room. Toilet rooms feature illuminated Soul Window mirrors and cast recycled-bronze sink-bowls. The vestibule leading to the toilet rooms has mirrored walls etched with patterns abstracted from 160-year old six-guns, inventions that allowed Europeans to win Texas from the Comanche. Materials and Components Limited edition, American-couture studio-furnishings were invented for the project. They were produced in Chicago and Houston by artists, craftsmen and factories in just eleven weeks using rapid-prototyping and manufacturing techniques refined by the design team over 25 years and relying equally upon skilled hand-work and digital design and production methods. Materials were chosen to be durable and sustainable, to develop patinas instead of maintenance issues. Elements were sourced and produced near the site, are often recycled and never made in China nor chosen from a catalog. The palette includes regional mahogany, American ebony, recycled cast-bronze and cast-aluminum, recycled fabricated-bronze and oxidized-steel, hand-blown Chicago glass, wool-felt, burlap, saddle leather, upholstery leather, 100% raw cotton denim, integrally-colored, non-combustible resin, Texas granite.
RESEARCH, INFLUENCES AND INSPIRATION: “100 Years of Solitude” by the Nobel prize-winning Columbian magical-realist Gabriel Garcia Marquez; the graffiti of Rio De Janeiro; teenagers in hoodies and skinny jeans; Panamanian Kuna molas (patterns once used for body painting that were translated into embroidered clothing during the Spanish colonization of the area); Texas cowboy clothing, including felt hats, hand-sewn boots, silver belt buckles and 6-guns; “Guns Germs and Steel”, a work of anthropology by biologist Jared Diamond; the Three Sisters (squash, beans and corn), the foodstuffs that allowed the American population to grow to 100 million five hundred years ago; “Blood Meridian” a surreal novel about the war for Texas between the Europeans, Mexicans and Indians by novelist Cormak McCarthy; gold sculptures of the Inca; the book “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” by anthropologist Charles Mann; creatures depicted in the geo-glyphs in the Nazca desert in Southern Peru; “Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanche, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History” by S.C. Gwynne.
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