Ella Funt – Annabel Karim Kassar

₃₃ Ella Funt, New York, 2023 Interiors

Interiors

Complete

I was attracted by the need to maintain a strong link in the new design with the history, ambience and sensuality of the original Club 82, while at the same time not producing a copy but a new space. My task was to honour the memory while creating a new, contemporary restaurant. It was also important to create visual and physical links between the restaurant and the downstairs cabaret space that respected their separate spheres but let them add to each other’s individual atmosphere.

My starting point was to reject the current fashion in New York restaurant design for minimal decoration and bare finishes only relieved by the odd mirror or bad art. I prefer an unashamed sensuality in restaurant design, using colour, light and dark spaces, fabrics and rich textures. A restaurant must have good food and wines, but it must provide the ambience to enjoy these. Remember that a restaurant is about meeting people – maybe a date, maybe friends, maybe family. So the space must provide pools of privacy as well as a bar for seeing and being seen. I aim to create a total human experience not a factory for eating.

A restaurant needs a sense of drama and place, not anonymity. You need to be excited the moment you step into a bar-restaurant. One of my absolutely favourite New York restaurants was the now sadly defunct Palio, on West 51st. The bar was dominated by a huge, ceiling-high mural painted on all four walls, in deep reds and scarlets, depicting the annual Piazza del Campo horse race in Sienna. The mural was painted by the Italian artist Sandro Chia in 1985. It is an explosion of colour. The effect is deeply emotional – the very opposite of the current fad that clients should not be distracted from their meal. If you want to see what Chia’s mural looked like, it is a location in Paul Schrader’s indy movie, Light Sleeper.

INSTAGRAM

Sketching and interior design by Annabel @akk_architects for @ellafunt.nyc • #interiordesign #interiordecoration #interiors #restaurantdesign #architectslife #sketching #sketchdaily #portrait

“Annabel Karim Kassar Revives an Erstwhile New York Institution: The restaurant is designed with dramatic flair by Annabel Karim Kassar, with tiled walls allowing the various zones—a French salle à manger playing the part of a main dining room; a shadowy bar; private booths and “whispering bar”—to play peek-a-boo with guests.”

SURFACE MAGAZINE

“A Storied Drag Revue Gets a New Home in the East Village – Ella Funt is a Maximalist Revival of Queer History. Architect and designer Annabel Karim Kassar unveiled the East Village restaurant to usher in the newest chapter for Club 82, a drag revue with Hollywood connections and a storied past.”

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