Nara Ornamental Steel/Kansas City, MO

Products: BS Steel of Kansas, Kansas City, manufactured the 5,156 pounds (2339 kg) of steel used for the ornamental work.

Fine Points: Nara is a Japanese robatastyle restaurant in Kansas City’s urban core. It achieves a contemporary Asian look through its execution of ornamental steel work. Starting with 5-foot- (1.5-m-) tall sheets of steel, the installer used a plasma cutter to burn a pattern created by the design team, leaving the slag edges unfi nished. Acids and oils lend a rough-hewn look. Where the pattern was created vertically, fl at sheets were hung as totems to delineate the inside and outside dining areas. Inside, they were hung using adjustable tubing specially created to bypass the space’s ductwork. The horizontally cut sheets were rolled into drums and installed onto the building’s castiron columns. The bar/entry area includes a back-lit steel table.