Portfolio: Tangram Food Hall, Flushing, N.Y.

TO SATISFY CHANGING customer tastes, F&T Group (Flushing, N.Y.) created a 24,000-square-foot food hall with space for varied stalls and counters in Tangram Mall, an entertainment, shopping and dining mixed-used project in downtown Flushing, N.Y. Unlike typical food courts, food halls seek independent or chef-owned concepts as tenants; its name, “Tangram,” reflects this ethos and comes from a Chinese geometric puzzle that can be recombined to make other shapes.

Enter BHDM Design (New York) to assemble the myriad bits to create Tangram Food Hall, which emphasizes Asian cuisine to reflect and connect to Flushing’s diverse Asian and Asian American communities. Inspired by the energy and activity of open-air, night markets in Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei, according to BHDM Principal Dan Mazzarini, the team channeled the frenzy of people, sights and smells through raw and reclaimed materials along with theatrical lighting and neon signs to visually define the space.

A proscenium arch signals the entrance to the street-level food hall, which is bathed in daylight through windows and skylights. Above, a blacked-out ceiling with arrow-shaped neon encourages movement. The materials palette, described as “organic industrial meets cyberpunk,” includes concrete floors, reclaimed cedar columns, exposed ceilings, textured metals and ceramic surfaces. After dark, neon signs, gobo images, TV screens and kinetic lights keep the area glowing.

Visitors will find vendors lining the perimeter along a center island offering savory and sweet street fare from Japan, Vietnam, Hong Kong and other East Asian countries and cultures. Ceiling-mounted neon signs hung from a suspended lattice structure call out individual vendors but can be changed when new tenants arrive. “Tangram is actively evolving even after it opened,” says Mazzarini. The flexible design acts just like a Tangram puzzle that can be reconfigured.

What started as a conversation about the food hall between F&T Group and BHDM Design eight years ago evolved to include a master plan for all of Tangram’s retail along with developing graphics, branding and vendor standards for the 1.2 million-square-foot mall. “This is the future of retail,” Mazzarini says, “a world which still focuses on people, in spaces.”