Diller Scofidio + Renfro designs 11,000 s/f Lincoln restaurant

Lincoln, the new destination restaurant at Lincoln Center, is now open on Hearst Plaza and West 65th St. Its exterior is designed by the award-winning design firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro in association with FX Fowle and the interior is by Diller Scofidio + Renfro alone, the same firm that is responsible for much of the nearly completed $1.2 billion redevelopment of the Lincoln Center campus. The restaurant is built on two levels, with entrances on 65th St. into its lower level and on the Hearst Plaza (formerly the North Plaza) into its main level. Lincoln is a pavilion restaurant - a free standing structure participating in the theater of social life that spills out onto the public plazas and streets before and after Lincoln Center performances and beckoning the public to come inside. Lincoln's four walls are made of glass, and its roof is a 7,200 s/f walk-able lawn of green grass in a sloping hyperbolic paraboloid shape. "Lincoln's moment of invention came when we discovered how to design a destination restaurant without consuming public space on the Lincoln Center campus," said Elizabeth Diller, principal of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. "The roof became a new kind of interface between public and private, with the twisted plane of lawn acting as an occupiable green canopy over the glass pavilion restaurant." The 11,000 s/f restaurant has at its center a 1,000 s/f kitchen, where diners can watch executive chef Jonathan Benno and his team prepare the contemporary Italian menu. Designed by Yui Design, the kitchen features two main cooking stations and a back bar, as well as pastry, coffee, meat, fish, pasta and expediting stations. Lincoln is operated by Patina Restaurant Group.