Video

Messing with a successful restaurant is a tricky task. While the dining scene demands fresh ideas and style, prestigious establishments often resist change. A facelift to a beloved eatery might backfire, alienating old customers and disappointing new ones. And if the restaurant occupies a space in a landmark building renovated 13 years before by your mentor, an architect’s job becomes that much more difficult. None of this stopped the husband-andwife team of Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, partners at Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, from transforming Jean-Georges, the flagship of Jean- Georges Vongerichten’s dining spots in Shanghai. The chef runs three places there, all in the same building— the historic Three on the Bund, a Beaux-Arts pile built in 1916 for the Union Assurance Company and reconfigured by Michael Graves in 2004. Neri and Hu, who worked for Graves in the 1990s and early 2000s, were involved in the Three on the Bund project including the design of the existing Jean-Georges.