Case study · JFK Airport, New York
Black Tap, JFK Terminal 8: A Living Metal Bar Built for Nonstop Traffic
Photo: 3 Spark Design
The project
Black Tap started in New York and now has locations from Las Vegas and London to Dubai and Singapore. When Terminal 8 at JFK was rebuilt, Black Tap came in with several of its concepts at once. We built the bar top for The Bar by Black Tap, and it had to look like Black Tap on day one, in zinc, with the opening date already set.
01
The Brief: a global brand’s standard, in zinc
Black Tap has a look, and zinc is part of it. Designer Samantha Goodrich and her team at Richcraft Design in New York had worked with us on earlier Black Tap projects. They wanted the same zinc look at JFK, with their edge profile, built for a bar that serves travelers from early morning to late at night.
The initial fabricator failed to meet the expectations for Black Tap. That’s when the design team called us.
02
The Challenge: an airport, a fixed launch, and heavy daily use
Every part of the brief made the job harder:
- The launch date wasn’t moving. The bar had to be built and delivered, with the install coordinated, in a much shorter window than the job was first planned around.
- It’s an airport. Getting materials into an active terminal and staging them there is slower than a street-front restaurant install.
- It’s a commercial bar top for a high-traffic venue. Travelers sit, lean, set down bags and glasses, and leave, all day long. The surface has to take that.
- The edge had to be exact. The designers had drawn the profile they wanted. Close wasn’t good enough.
03
Our Solution
We matched the edge profile exactly. We built the profile the design team specified, with no substitutions and no “close enough” trim. It runs the full length of the bar and turns the corners cleanly.
We built it in real zinc. We use deposition to apply thin coats of material in a controlled manner to build up the surface, which lets us take on complex curves and custom edge profiles. The result is a durable metal bar top with the depth and variation of real zinc.
We worked with KegWorks to incorporate their stainless drink rail into our bar, so the rail and the zinc top read as one piece.
We held the schedule. We fabricated in our shop, delivered to the terminal, and coordinated the install on a tight timeline without compromising the design.
04
The Result
The bar opened on time, and it looks like Black Tap. Black Tap and the design team were very appreciative and impressed with how fast we turned it around, and we’re already talking with them about future projects.
For designers working on multi-site brand rollouts, this is the job we point to: a brand standard matched exactly, on an airport timeline, in a room that stays busy from open to close.
Questions
What is the Black Tap bar top at JFK Terminal 8 made of?
Real zinc, with the edge profile matched exactly to the profile specified by Richcraft Design and a stainless drink rail by KegWorks incorporated into the bar.
Did 3 Spark Design install the bar at JFK?
We fabricated the top in our shop, delivered it to the terminal, and coordinated the install on a tight timeline. The bar opened on time.
Planning a bar that has to hold up to nonstop traffic?
Send us the drawing and the date. We’ll tell you straight what it takes.