NYCxDesign awards given to floating lamps and a pop-up Black Forest restaurant

In only its second year, New York’s design competition NYCxDesign 2017 attracted more than 700 entries from around the world. Awards in more than 50 categories were presented at the Museum of Modern Art that was also broadcast on Facebook Live. Among the winners was Gaggenau, a 333-year-old German metal and consumer durables design and manufacturing firm.

Gaggenau won the Architectural Pop-Up competition with Restaurant 1683, a four-night pop-up restaurant in New York. The restaurant was the first of a three-year celebration of the company’s one-third millennium anniversary.

Gaggenau began in the Black Forest mountain range in Germany when a blacksmith hand-forged the first nail from molten iron. The Restaurant 1683 pop-up in Chelsea was designed to give diners an experience that bridged 17th-century Germany with contemporary art, design, entertainment, and culinary expression.

In addition to clusters of real trees and raw timber construction dining tables and cooking stations, the restaurant walls featured murals of trees and waterfall features. Lighting focused on the tables and chef workstations heightened the forest effect. Don’t feel like you missed out by not making a reservation as the performance design was invitation-only.

According to Gaggenau, three-star Michelin chef Daniel Humm, the co-owner of two restaurants in New York City, Eleven Madison Park, and The NoMad, oversaw the creation of the Gaggenau Restaurant 1683.

Milan-based Luceplan Lighting was a dual-award winner at NYCxDesign. Luceplan designers won the Sconce and Pendant/Chandelier categories.

Counterbalance Wall, designed for Luceplan by Daniel Rybakken, won the Sconce category. The design’s counterweight allows the long arm to be positioned where needed for the LED diffused light.

Odile Decq designed the futuristic-looking Soleil Noir for Luceplan. The lamp is made of molded polyurethane foam with a LED lamp hidden inside a disk that diffuses the light. The asymmetric support cable is thick and strong enough to keep its appealing unusual shape.

From an immersive restaurant experience to lights that appear to float in the air, these 2017 NYCxDesign Award winners travel from a deep dig into history and a tradition of excellence to forward-focused fixtures.