Josh Greenspan is no stranger to New York’s hospitality scene. He began his career working with restaurateur Daniel Boulud before overseeing the opening of Le Bain at The Standard, High Line, advising the opening of Scarr’s Pizza, and launching his own design firm, Studio639. Now, he returns to hospitality with his first wholly independent project, VV’s Cocktail Room. Greenspan composed the 400-square-foot cocktail room out of USM Modular System.
Greenspan wanted to include USM’s midcentury style—but not as furniture. The designer collaborated with USM’s director of architectural development, Ian Mutschelknaus, to envelope the interior in USM Blue Steel panels. The dark blue rectangular USM panels are individually framed in metal, creating a quiet grid on the back wall. The grid continues to the bar’s counter, where the metal frames are used as shelving to display VV’s variety of Japanese spirits. When asked what his favorite design element is from VV’s Cocktail Room, Greenspan shared with AN Interior, “The USM, of course. Seeing it used as walls and wrapping around the room is just so cool. It makes me smile every time I walk into the space.”
The furniture-turned-architectural system was partly informed by Greenspan’s desire for intentional choreography of space which was found during his his travels to Hong Kong to Tokyo. The latter’s cocktail omakase experience, where precision is everything, is the most explicit reference. It informs VV’s programming: Greenspan tapped James Beard Award–winning bartender Neal Bodenheimer and friend Vincent Favela to shape a cocktail omakase. To complement the personalized concoctions, five-time James Beard Award winner and the designer’s mom, Dorie Greenspan, created the menu of snacks. His dad, Michael Greenspan, designed the banquette overlooking the area.
With only 18 burgundy seats in the cocktail lounge, guests immediately get the sense of an exclusive retreat within the loud, bustling city. Seats line a walnut slab bar counter that extends out from the USM consoles, housing the sink and back-of-bar utilities.
Artful details continue the Japanese and Chinese notes in the cocktail lounge’s design. One example is found on the back wall of the bar against the USM grid: the gloomy urbanscape painting A Hidden Place by Keita Morimoto. The painting wasn’t originally intended for the design, said Greenspan. “But when I started working on the design for VV’s, it became clear that the painting really belonged at VV’s. The color palette and subject were a perfect fit and it adds a layer of warmth and visual interest that is grounded by the USM panels behind it.”
Another element: Found above the dark walnut bar, a long, wavy paper lantern by Brooklyn design studio Kawabi offers a welcomed soft texture against the metal panels.
Greenspan coined the term “Yesterday’s Future” to describe the design of VV’s Cocktail Bar. “Yesterday’s Future, to me, is the futuristic objects, materials and technology of our childhoods—fax machines, laserdiscs, minidiscs, bullet trains, monorails, the Concorde, and others that still exist but never fully became a part of the future we’re currently living,” he shared. “Sort of the way Tokyo and Hong Kong feel, like this neon future we were promised that never came to be.”
