Palette: A Greenpoint Food and Art Hub Built on the Idea of Branches Growing as One Tree

Most mixed-use buildings stack their programmes like boxes on a shelf: retail at the bottom, something cultural in the middle, and a sealed floor between each. Palette starts from the opposite premise. It takes its cue from Yeonliji, the phenomenon in which branches from different roots fuse and grow as a single tree, and it turns that image into both a structural system and a social strategy. Restaurants, cooking classrooms, open studios, galleries, rooftop farms and public squares are meant to grow into one another rather than sit side by side.

Designed by 현찬 배, 가은 이 and 정현 이, the project sits in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a neighbourhood whose artists, young residents, chefs and entrepreneurs often struggle to find accessible, flexible space to work and collaborate. The team's answer is a building where chefs, consumers and artists share infrastructure and floor area, with the flowing movement of the nearby East River shaping its curves.

A Canopy of Branching Columns Over the Street

The opening rendering sets the tone at ground level. A walkway passes beneath a curving green underside held up by tree-shaped columns, and the figures chosen to populate it, a father carrying two children and a passing cyclist, signal that this is public ground first and a commercial building second. The columns are where the Yeonliji metaphor becomes literal: branching forms that suggest shelter beneath a canopy while carrying the wide, open floor plates above.

This matters because the structure does real programmatic work. By distributing loads through branching supports instead of walls, the designers clear the floor plates for flexible use, and they give the building a recognisable silhouette that reads as an invitation rather than a frontage. The soft curve of the canopy also introduces the river-inspired fluidity that recurs throughout the scheme.

The Kitchen as Classroom

Palette's most pointed argument is about who gets access to a professional kitchen. The cooking classroom shown here, with blue walls, stone-topped counters and a chef in whites addressing students at their sinks, recasts the restaurant as a place where visitors participate rather than simply eat. The space is calm and orderly, closer to a teaching studio than a back-of-house kitchen.

Behind the image sits an economic proposition. For chefs with limited resources, the project offers shared infrastructure and communal spaces, lowering the financial barrier to entry while increasing their visibility. Teaching becomes a form of exposure, and the relationship between chef and consumer turns into what the designers describe as a shared cultural dialogue around food.

An Open Third Floor Where Art Meets the Sky

The gallery court is where the building's openness is most legible. Paintings stand on easels inside a glazed space, curving ramps and a stair thread between levels, and planted roof edges hint at the rooftop farms above. The curves of the open studio stairs are a deliberate reference to the East River's movement, softening what could otherwise be a rigid circulation core.

The designers describe the third floor as an expansive column-supported space without enclosing walls, free to host exhibitions, performances and community gatherings. Glass façades connect these activities to the surrounding streets, and the large glazed panels let artists put their work on view to passers-by. It is a strategy of transparency: culture is made visible from outside, which in turn draws people in.

A Stage at the Back That Keeps the Site Awake

The final rendering moves to night. A curved amphitheatre wraps a round stage lit by crossing beams of light beneath a starry sky, and the shift in time is the point. The stage at the rear of the site adds another layer of activity, so the project keeps working after the lunch service and gallery hours have ended.

Placing performance at the back rather than on the street edge is a smart sequencing move. Visitors are drawn through the dining, teaching and exhibition spaces to reach it, which reinforces the intertwined logic of the whole scheme. The stage's curved geometry again echoes the river, tying the outdoor room back to the building's formal language.

Why This Project Matters

Palette treats mixed use as a question of overlap rather than adjacency. Its programmes are integrated vertically and horizontally so that dining, exhibitions, performances and farming are meant to share space and audiences. The Yeonliji metaphor could easily have stayed a poetic label; instead the team uses it to justify a branching column system, wall-free floor plates and a circulation route that keeps different users crossing paths.

Equally important is the project's attention to access. By framing shared kitchens and open studios as infrastructure for chefs and artists with limited means, the designers address a real pressure in a neighbourhood like Greenpoint. Palette proposes that a building can lower the cost of starting out while giving the public a reason to linger, a useful model for any city trying to keep its creative communities rooted.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: 현찬 배, 가은 이, 정현 이

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Project credits: Palette by 현찬 배, 가은 이, 정현 이.