Isay Weinfeld’s Fasano Gives the Four Seasons Another Life, and Other News

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With Fasano, Isay Weinfeld Gives the Four Seasons a Second, Second Life 

In 2016, the Brazilian Modernist Isay Weinfeld audaciously ushered in a new era for New York’s famous power lunch haven, the landmarked Four Seasons Restaurant, which exited its famous Philip Johnson–conceived environs inside Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building. Opening to much hullabaloo, its lifespan lasted a mere ten months. (The teak-and-bronze mirrored space pleased some critics and reportedly displeased its controversial investors.) 

This spring, the Brazilian luxury hospitality company Fasano Hotel, who have worked with Weinfeld on properties across Brazil, reinvented the space as a casual osteria with an ample bar that posts the menu—mostly lunchtime classics like soups and rucola con Parmigiano Reggiano—on mirrors. In the neutral main and smaller private dining rooms, a silver cart swans across the plush carpeting and expanses of warm woods sourced in Brazil, offering bollito misto to diners bathed in the discrete up-lighting that just might transform Weinfeld’s controversial bronze columns into the kind of flashy minimalism Johnson always favored.

A building boom is all but redefining one of Vancouver’s oldest neighborhoods.

“The juncture between the city’s historic West End, one of the oldest residential neighborhoods, and Coal Harbour, has now become the epicenter of a frenzied new building spree that has drawn international starchitects to one of the highest price-per square-footage areas in North America. … In December of last year, Vancouver City Council approved a new 43-story tower at 1640-1650 Alberni, designed by SOM, of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa fame. … Meanwhile, at 1515 Alberni, Ole Scheeren’s new tower, set for completion in 2027, will replace the late great Vancouver architect Peter Cardew’s elegant 1978 Crowne Life Plaza, wrapped in a curtain wall and set on a simple brick base.” —[H/T Architectural Digest]

LVMH partners with a sustainable packaging company to reduce its carbon footprint.

“The conglomerate’s beauty arm has formed a partnership with Origin Materials Inc., a California-based company focused on creating packaging and materials with minimal carbon footprint. As part of the partnership, LVMH Beauty will purchase Origin Materials’ polyethylene terephthalate—commonly known as PET—which Origin purports is more carbon-negative than other PET alternatives. With the multi-year deal, LVMH hopes to create eco-friendly packaging for its beauty brands, which include Fresh, Fenty Beauty and Make Up For Ever, and get closer to reaching its own sustainability targets, which it aims to hit by 2030.” —[H/T Business of Fashion]

New York City’s largest rooftop park has opened atop a two-acre space in Chelsea.

“For those who find Little Island to be bigly crowded despite its capacity restrictions, a new expanse of public-private open space similarly extending out and over the Hudson River has debuted on Manhattan’s West Side. Located immediately north of Heatherwick Studio’s artificial island park, the Hudson River Park Trust’s newest patch of open public space encompasses 80,000 square feet of rooftop space atop Chelsea’s historic Pier 57. At just shy of 2 acres, the park–dubbed the Pier 57 “Sky Park”–is the largest stretch of public rooftop parkland in New York City.” —[H/T The Architect’s Newspaper]

Avant-garde artist Hermann Nitsch, known for his bloody performances, dies at 83.

“Hermann Nitsch, the Austrian artist who used blood, viscera, and splattered paint in ritualistic and often controversial artworks about religion, war, and metaphysics, died on April 18, 2022. … Nitsch was a founding member of the Viennese Actionists, a loosely affiliated group of Austrian avant-garde artists who practiced a confrontational brand of performative artmaking. It was around 1957 that he first conceived of Orgies Mysteries Theatre, a complex artistic ritual that included blood, animal carcasses, religious sacrifices, music, and dancing. From those performances evolved Nitsch’s “action paintings,” his signature works.” —[H/T Artnet News]

A new report finds that public art can decrease traffic accidents by up to 17 percent.

“A study conducted by Bloomberg Philanthropies examined 17 sites over two years, before and after they were painted with “asphalt art” (art on surfaces such as roads, sidewalks, and underpasses). It found a 17 percent decrease in total crashes and a decrease in severity of the crashes that did occur: There were 37 percent fewer crashes that resulted in injury and 50% fewer crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists.” —[H/T Hyperallergic]

The West Coast’s biggest floating offshore wind farm may rise in the sea near Seattle.

“A company is proposing to build what could be the West Coast’s biggest floating offshore wind farm, suggesting the expansion of a technology that has yet to find footing in the U.S. Known as Olympic Wind, the project’s outlines were presented by Washington-based Trident Winds in an unsolicited request for a federal lease in late March. The proposal could include up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough for about 800,000 homes, produced from turbines mounted on platforms and moored to the deep ocean floor about 43 miles off the coast of Grays Harbor County, Washington.” —[H/T EnergyWire]

Today’s attractive distractions:

RTiiiKA is making “queer condoms” that are perfectly suited for gender-free genitals. 

We wouldn’t be surprised if this expressive robot head began haunting our nightmares.

NASA sends a surgeon to outer space using a new technology called “holoportation.” 

These new electric chopsticks trick people’s taste buds into thinking their meal is salty.