A full-day excursion of design, food and culture will start at 10:30 in front of Sunday to Sunday on the Lower East Side where NYC DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodgriguez will kick off a celebration of the outdoor dining prototypes the City is piloting as part its new permanent Dining Out NYC program. Designers and stakeholders will gather at each of the four sites throughout the day to demonstrate and discuss the design of the modules while sampling the cuisines and cultures that each restaurant showcases.
The day’s itinerary is as follows:10:30 am – 11:30 am Sunday to Sunday (Vegetarian)
88 Orchard Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Warique (Peruvian)
90-04 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm Dawa (Tibetan)
51-18 Skillman Ave, Woodside, Queens
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm Bodrum (Turkish)
584 Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan
Outdoor dining offered a lifeline during the pandemic, and NYC has recently emerged with new setup design prescriptions for a permanent program that will create a vibrant streetscape, improve the overall quality of life and continue to accelerate the city’s economic recovery. As a key part of this regenerative effort, the City is unveiling four new prototypes – two in Manhattan and two in Queens – that exemplify the lessons learned from the first-generation sheds erected during the pandemic and respond to some specific real-world challenges – from the expansive planter-lined Floating Parking Lane Setup installed at Bodrum, a Turkish restaurant on the Upper West Side, to the more compact Steep Street Setup in front of Dawa’s in Woodside, Queens with adjustable stilts concealed beneath the floor deck to accommodate the street’s sloping grade.
The prototypes were designed by WXY and fabricated by SITU in collaboration with the NYC Department of Transportation; safety measures were tantamount to the design brief. The Corner Setup at Sunday to Sunday, a vegetarian diner on the Lower East Side, for instance, is fortified by a thick aluminum wall with beveled corners that doubles as storage space making vehicular collisions far less likely by reducing projections into the street and making it easier for drivers to see pedestrians and other drivers arriving at the intersection. For the Midblock Setup at Warique, a Peruvian restaurant in Jackson Heights, a flexible and colorful design palette carries out the Peruvian-inspired livery characterizing the restaurant’s interior dining room distinguishing the setup along the streetscape.
Based on community and stakeholder feedback, the Dining Out NYC rules prioritize safety and equity by offering clear guidance for restaurant owners as they create new setups for outdoor dining. The inventive use of off-the-shelf materials and finishes and standardized structures such as marine plywood, steel tubing and polycarbonate panels to craft the prototypes facilitate easy and cost-effective sourcing, assemblage, maintenance and dismantling – fostering dynamic and aesthetically pleasing streetscapes.
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