The Pool - In Progress
The identity of a new dining venture required both sensitivity and creativity to build on its venue’s storied past—due reference without undue deference. With the departure of the legendary and beloved Four Seasons restaurant from its original location in midtown Manhattan’s Seagram Building—the 1959 midcentury modernist icon by architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson—Pandiscio Green worked with the incoming restauranteurs to strategize a timeless and enduring new identity. A branding process different from the deliberate flash-in-the-pan sometimes sought to kickstart such ventures, to build the long-term loyalties of younger generations of diners with ever-higher expectations for intelligent cuisine. With a less-is-more strategy appropriate to the setting, we drew our inspiration from the existing architectural layout, which featured one dining room with a signature reflecting pool, and another with a signature bar. The Pool's logo is a feminine celebration of the fish-scale-like pattern of Johnson’s famous steel pearl curtains. Throughout, names, visuals, and other materials navigated a complex intersection of stakeholders and interests, including the building’s original patrons, the Seagram Liquor company, its former tenants, and the landmarked status of the interiors themselves; for example, wayfinding, signage, and other graphics have been developed in a robust slab-serif typeface common in midcentury but now warmly associated with the particular history of the rooms.
