An expertly cooked truffled egg, dome-shaped and strategically positioned atop a composed salad, is just one of the sensory pleasures awaiting patrons of The Wright, an urbane dining destination recently installed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. Aptly named for Frank Lloyd Wright, the iconic 1959 building’s noted (if not notorious) architect, the restaurant—a business collaboration of the Guggenheim Foundation and Restaurant Associates—opened in December 2009 as the culmination of the museum’s 50th-anniversary celebration.

Designed with an intelligent sleight of hand by the New York—based firm of Andre Kikoski Architect, the 1,600-square-foot, 58-seat eatery, which is adjacent to the museum’s soaring rotunda, replaces a drab coffee shop that had been in operation for years. Unlike the previous establishment, the new interior is evocative of its architectural pedigree. It is not, however, overwhelmed by it.

“We wanted the restaurant to be consistent with Wright’s philosophy,” says Kikoski, the firm’s principal. So he and his design team took their cues from the master’s geometry and materiality, carefully calculating the room’s shapes and proportions based on the motifs and dynamic forms Wright used throughout the building. Ergo, a crisply stretched vinyl-membrane ceiling canopy swooping through the center of the room echoes the spirals that circle the museum’s rotunda, as does the trapunto of the softly padded leather seating, and the uplit tiered wall covered in a sound-absorbing, meshlike textile that curves above the long banquette. Sleek solid-surface table- and bar tops reference the dynamic planes of the museum’s interior, and custom-pounded stainless-steel bases—supporting the central communal table—adhere to the geometry of a hieroglyphlike eye used by Wright as a decorative motif. With a nod toward his predecessor’s gesamtkunstwerk approach to architecture, Kikoski’s strategy also included designing all of the furnishings, and using such cutting-edge materials as the panels of alternating walnut-veneer and fiber-optic strips fitted with backlit glass shelves that surface the wall behind the bar.

Further emphasizing The Wright’s connection to the museum, the restaurant’s architects maintained a similar white color palette to provide a gallerylike setting for the variable hues of Chef Rodolfo Contreras’s seasonal cuisine. Likewise, this scheme serves as a neutral canvas for a work by Liam Gillick—an 11th-hour addition to the program. Inspired by a Robert Irwin kind of scrim Kikoski originally proposed, the Guggenheim commissioned the British-born artist, known for his thoughtful structural compositions, to collaborate with the architect and create a site-specific installation that would become part of its permanent collection.

Working closely with Kikoski (a friend and neighbor), Gillick devised a sculptural relief for the restaurant that continually alters the spatial experience for diners, just as Wright’s museum changes the perception of art for those navigating its ramps and recesses. “I pushed for what I thought would be important,” says Kikoski, describing the process. “At the same time, he told me to trust him—until finally we arrived at something we both felt was viscerally correct.”

Gillick’s ultimate solution, which he dubbed “The horizon produced by a factory once it had stopped producing views,” comprises a variegated series of parallel aluminum planks, or bars, powder-coated in rich, warm colors. Due to the staggered placement of the bars, the skin appears transparent as it screens the glass entry wall and wraps the room’s south and east elevations, hovering over the deep blue banquette. The symbiotic result, says Kikoski, “like the building, completes the architecture as much as the architecture complements the art.”

It takes a certain professional daring to intervene in one of the most significant buildings of the 20th century. Indeed, Wright once wrote, regarding the integrity of his design, “No details (not even the smallest) can be interjected or interfered with without marring the peace and quiet of the whole concept, execution and purpose.” Yet this elegant space that bears his name feels of a piece with his oeuvre, almost as if it had been there all along.