Designing a Michelin-Starred Restaurant—In a Car Dealership

MotoringDesigning a Michelin-Starred Restaurant—In a Car DealershipGenesis is the latest luxury automaker to reinvent the in-person car buying experience with Genesis House, a 46,000-square-foot space in lower Manhattan

By Brett Berk

March 29, 2022

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Genesis House, a three-level, 46,000-square-foot space in the Meatpacking district, includes an upscale restaurant—run by the Michelin-starred restaurant Onjium, from Seoul.Photo: Courtesy of Genesis

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Car shoppers have become savvy in their use of online research tools and less willing to subject themselves to the pushy double-dealing sales tactics at traditional brick-and-mortar car dealerships. So, it’s no surprise that automakers are struggling to find new ways to connect consumers with their brands. One of the solutions they’ve settled on is the automotive Brand Experience Center. These engaging, interactive physical sites are sponsored entirely by the car manufacturer and meant to provide potential car buyers—especially younger buyers—lower pressure means to engage with a brand, saving them an overt sales pitch.

These locations have recently become something of a trend in New York City. Audi was perhaps the first to create one with its Audi Forum, which opened to display its cars in Midtown in 2006 (however, it has long since closed). Cadillac tried next in 2016 with Cadillac House—a 10,000-square-foot space on the ground floor of its global headquarters in west SoHo, with a coffee shop, a fashion pop-up for independent labels, and an art installation space, but that also shuttered after just three years. In 2018, Lexus opened Intersect by Lexus, a restaurant and lounge with a revolving menu created by chefs from around the world, but it closed unceremoniously at the start of 2022. Near the end of 2021, Mercedes-Benz hosted a temporary pop-up space in the Meatpacking district to showcase the benefits of its new sub-line of fully battery-powered EQ vehicles—it closed in December 2021.

The Genesis House also features the absolute core of the business, which is selling luxury vehicles.

Photo: Courtesy of Genesis

However, other manufacturers have developed more permanent-seeming spaces. Lincoln has an ongoing relationship with the Seaport, down at the southern tip of Manhattan, where it sponsors cultural programming and offers test drives to Millennials and Gen X’ers who have little to no perception of the 100-year-old American luxury brand. In the spring of 2021, Italian exotic carmaker Lamborghini opened the Lamborghini Lounge in west Chelsea, a private site where the brand can host events for potential consumers, hold dinners for customers receiving their brand-new vehicle from the factory in Europe, and help clients spend six figures customizing their cars with special paints, trim, and leathers.

Inside the Lamborghini Lounge in west Chelsea.

Photo: Courtesy of Lamborghini

But it is Korean upstart luxury carmaker Genesis—an upscale and design-forward spinoff of Hyundai, kind of like what Lexus is to Toyota—that has taken the formula to the greatest heights. In late 2021, it opened Genesis House, a three-level, 46,000-square-foot space in the Meatpacking district, overlooking the Hudson River and open to the public daily. It includes a giant showroom on the ground floor, with rotating artistic installations and a host of current and conceptual Genesis vehicles. It features a theater in the basement for lectures and performances.

Perhaps most compellingly, upstairs it features a café and teahouse, a reading library, a craft shop, and an upscale restaurant—run by the Michelin-starred restaurant Onjium, from Seoul. All of these are intended to expose passerby to the brand, but also to its Korean roots.

A dish served at the Genesis House restaurant.

Photo: Courtesy of Genesis

The most pressing exposure comes from taking in the six-course, three-hour, $150 tasting menu dinner at the restaurant. Housed in a temple-like Scholar’s Pavilion–looking structure of traditional wood joinery and overlooking the Hudson River, it is a feast for the body and the senses.

“Onjium’s food is traditional banga, royal-aristocratic cuisine whose flavors remain traditionally Korean but presented in a new context,” says Eulho Suh of Suh Architects, whose firm designed the space. “Plated on ceramics crafted by contemporary Korean artisans using traditional techniques to render new forms, the ingredients retain their flavor while presenting something really surprising. We wanted the architecture to do this too. Both the space and cuisine are programs to be experienced over time and seasons.”

The cozy reading lounge inside the Genesis House.

Photo: Courtesy of Genesis

The entire space has the feeling of a sanctuary, a lovely place in which to dine, read, relax, or shop. This is in part because of the warmth of the materials. “On the ground floor, metal and wood create an interior that is both raw and refined. Broad surfaces of hot-rolled steel, corten steel, and expanded metal coexist alongside brushed copper volumes such as the concierge desk and elevator cab. An array of life-sized car doors and reflective surfaces that replicate car models infinitely add drama while the oak floor throughout brings these industrial materials into a living room context,” says Kyungen Kang of Suh Architects, who helped lead the design of the project.

Yet, much of the delight of the space derives from it taking advantage of the landscape. “There is a Korean sensibility that incorporates the void throughout. In Korean landscape philosophy, one’s private yard is all the nature one can see sitting in one’s veranda-living space, or maru,” Suh says. “Throughout Genesis House, we apply the same principles of leaving enough space to fill in for oneself.”

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