With a career spanning three decades, Richard Bloch has established himself as a key figure in the restaurant design world. Bloch was a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a city planner in Iran, and a design consultant on various U.S. government cultural centers across the world. This varied career led him to establish Richard Bloch Architects in New York in 1986, and the firm has since completed hundreds of projects. Here, Bloch discusses a few of those, the challenges of being a young architect, and working from the first design idea.
Did you always know you wanted to be a designer?
I wanted to be a carpenter, but another kid’s dad said, ‘You do not want to be a carpenter, you want to be an architect.’ From that point on I wanted to be an architect, although I wasn’t quite sure what that was.
What are some of your first memories of design?
I liked making sand cities on the beach when I was 12 and living in Palm Beach [Florida] over the summers. I remember having the entire beach to myself.
Give us a bit of your background: college, first jobs, early lessons learned?
I went to Brooklyn Tech High School then Pratt Institute in New York—one more stop on the subway. Pratt was a very tough school. I remember we started out with 160 students. By the end of the first year, half of the student population was gone, just like that. As a student, I got two hours sleep a night.
After graduating from Pratt with a bachelor of architecture degree, I worked on a lot of New York brownstones and had a knack for zoning analyses. But like most college graduates, first jobs are always frustrating. There are only a few things you really can do as a young architect. I spent a lot of time handling design drawings and working drawings. It was an apprenticeship process—a bit unfriendly, but I learned a lot.
Why and how did you start your own firm?
My father was a small businessman, so it was a natural thing for me to be a small businessman. An overwhelming majority of architects in America work in one- to three-person practices, and you have to like working in this environment. If you are entrepreneurial, there are some exciting things about being your own boss.
Can you discuss some of your recent projects?
We recently completed Shuko [in New York], which is operated by former Masa chefs Nick Kim and Jimmy Lau. Shuko’s design offers a mixture of natural woods and materials that combine Japanese sensibility with bare exposed, old brick walls that are more typical of a New York restaurant in the West Village.
The bar counter is an iconic sushiya element. Here it is unusually large and seats 20 guests. Finding the restaurant requires an effort, which is also deliberate, with its quiet exterior and no signs. It offers a design that seeks to suggest it’s Japanese, with a tall, floor to ceiling, steel door and a natural wood handle, and wood planks above. Only a building number provides a cultural hint that you have arrived at Shuko.
State Grill and Bar in the Empire State Building where I worked with Nick Valenti, CEO of the Patina Restaurant Group, in collaboration with the Empire State Building Realty Trust. State is a casual-suits restaurant designed as an amenity to the Empire State Building. The goal was to create a contemporary restaurant that looked like it opened when the building did back in 1931. It has an art deco, modern feel and is mostly custom from the top to bottom. We had almost 10,000 square feet. On the main level, it has about 100 dining seats, a finished open kitchen and can fit 30 people into the bar and bar lounge area.
Is there a challenging project that you are especially proud of?
All are challenging. Of course some are more interesting than others. The job that put me in business was the Hyatt Key West in Florida. That was very exciting for me.
Benu in San Francisco is one of favorite restaurant designs. If ever I was crazy enough to open my own restaurant, I want it to be Benu. Also the Sony sushi room [inside the Sony building in New York], an only five-seat private sushi room, was a very intense job. Basically, it was a giant closet that was part of the Sony Club. The level of detail in this job was amazing. It took three months to design.
At Le Bernardin [in New York], I worked with the great designer and mentor Phil George. Le Bernardin was a large project that was created with old fashioned, hand drawings and built in four months.
What are you looking forward to at your office?
I am looking forward to finding a few young people to join my office as associates and partners. It is time.
What do you find are the most challenging and exciting aspects of your job?
I love all aspects of the job. I love first meeting clients to talk about their dreams and their ideas. The client provides the primal design, not the architect, and I enjoy talking to the client about this. The whole design process is exciting to me. I worked for many years with Valenti. He gets deep into design. It is fair to say we both love those long design sessions talking about design.
What is the most important thing to remember when designing a restaurant—both in terms of branding and interiors?
Everything flows from the design idea or concept that comes from the owner restaurateur or representative. They all have an idea. They all have a notion of what they are doing and where they want to land. From this flows the design and branding. It flows from the single first design idea.
Is there an architect or designer you most admire? Why?
The great Turkish architect, Mimar Sinan. He was the chief Ottoman architect, responsible for the construction of more than 300 major structures including the Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul. Also Francesco Borromini; he was a genius. Louis Kahn is a great American architect. Italian architect Renzo Piano is my favorite architect today. Architect Adolf Loos had a great influence on State Grill and Bar, and on my own sensibilities.
What would be your dream project and why?
I’m not sure that my dream project would be a restaurant but I would like to do urban design in developing countries. I would build neighborhood housing and retail in the Middle East or Northern Africa with simple design that solves important problems in many lives.
If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?
Thomas Jefferson, who was a genius.
Where would you eat and what would you be having?
My favorite restaurant on the planet is a little place called Owan in Tokyo. Chef Kondo’s menu frequently changes and I may drink a little too much sake there. Everything fits: design, food, service, and supremely communal [atmosphere].
If you weren’t a designer, what would you be?
I would be a real estate developer. A developer had an idea to create the tallest residential building in the New York and made it happen. I would like to do this in my next life.
