Amavi Restaurant

Located on 4 East 36th Street, Midtown Manhattan

Amavi opened in April 2024 as the debut location of a Mediterranean dining concept rooted in the coastal cuisine and social culture of the Aegean. Located at 4 East 36th Street, the space required a single floor plan to sustain two fundamentally different modes of occupation at once: the long, unhurried rhythm of shareable Mediterranean dining, and the social energy of a full cocktail program and private events. Bricble fabricated and installed all custom millwork for the interior, working directly with the ownership group on a scope that included the bar, a dedicated VIP room, custom cabinetry, and finished woodwork integrated across the dining floor.

We wanted Amavi to feel warm and alive, a space for a quiet dinner that never loses the possibility of a full bar. Bricble understood that from the first conversation and helped bring this space to life in the most exceptional way.

The Challenge

The interior's architectural identity arrived already declared: arched entry doors fitted with geometric metalwork grilles, heavily hand-troweled plaster on walls and columns, a warm layered palette that absorbs rather than reflects light. The millwork was required to read as continuous with that register, not applied over it. Every fabricated element had to carry the tonal weight of the architectural shell while meeting the durability demands of full-service restaurant operation.

Dining Floor

The banquette seating system runs as a continuous perimeter along one wall of the dining floor. Each unit was built with a recessed toe kick carrying integrated LED strip lighting, creating a visual separation between seating base and floor that makes the mass of the seating read as suspended rather than bearing. The effect opens the floor plane perceptually, expanding the apparent volume of the room without altering its physical dimensions. Built into the back of the run is a continuous planter box, fabricated as a permanent architectural element rather than a freestanding fixture, introducing biophilic material directly at the diner's peripheral sightline. Opposite the banquette, high-backed custom booths define the room's secondary boundary and its primary acoustic layer. Vertical channel-tufted upholstery on the booth panels provides sound absorption at the dining surface. Channel spacing was coordinated with table positions across the full run, producing a visual rhythm along the wall that registers as intentional rather than incidental.

Bar

The bar functions as the interior's operational anchor and the spatial hinge between the dining floor and the cocktail program. As the highest-traffic fabrication in the space, it sustains full-service volume across a restaurant day while presenting a finish level consistent with the surrounding architecture. Custom cabinetry at the bar and service points addresses the operational program while maintaining the surface standard of the guest-facing millwork, ensuring that functional elements don't interrupt the interior's material continuity.

VIP Room

The VIP room sits within the same footprint as the main floor but operates as a distinct spatial environment. Enclosed by floor-to-ceiling millwork panels in oiled white oak, the room seats twelve across a custom banquette and loose seating arrangement. Arched openings echo the restaurant's entry language, while upholstered wall panels bring the acoustic character of the booths into a fully enclosed setting. The joinery detail at the panel seams was taken from the bar millwork, tying the two spaces together without dissolving the VIP room's sense of enclosure and privacy.

Outcome

The seating system across the main floor was fabricated and installed as a coordinated assembly, with consistent upholstery profile, base geometry, and finish treatment across both booths and banquettes establishing a single material language across the floor plan. That coherence is structural: it holds the interior's tonal register across the full service area without relying on lighting or decoration to unify what the fabrication didn't.

When Agsia Studio designed Amavi's second location in Midtown Miami, a 4,000-square-foot space anchored by a 33-foot natural stone bar that opened in July 2025, the New York interior served as the primary spatial and material reference. That the fabrication identity translated clearly enough to anchor a second market is a measure of how the original millwork was specified and built.