Skywalker Grill Curves Around Lucas Museum

There is not a 90-degree angle in sight at Skywalker Grill, the new restaurant and bar inside Los Angeles’ Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, where Rockwell Group has extended the building’s sweeping architectural language into its interiors.

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Designed by Rockwell Group’s Los Angeles studio, the fifth-floor restaurant responds directly to the museum’s distinctive biomorphic form by MAD Architects and Stantec.

Rather than introducing a conventional rectilinear dining room, the designers have used curves throughout the space, creating an interior that feels continuous with the building around it.

“Responding to the museum’s distinctive biomorphic architecture, the restaurant features no 90-degree angles,” the Skywalker Grill team said.

Curved walls are wrapped in individually crafted cherry wood panels, with no two panels alike. Finger-raked cherrywood columns echo the tamboured banquettes around the perimeter, while curved booth partitions rise and fall organically to create more intimate spaces for conversation.

The restaurant also draws on the interiors of Skywalker Ranch, the 4,700-acre filmmaker’s retreat and workspace owned by Star Wars creator George Lucas in Marin County. Cherry wood features heavily throughout the space, providing a warm counterpoint to the museum’s futuristic exterior.

Guests arriving by lift enter a corridor lined with cherry panelling that folds upwards and over the ceiling before reaching the host stand. Inside, a central island is surrounded by a green crushed velvet banquette, circular tables and soft grey dining chairs.

Tamboured cherry-wrapped columns rise at slight angles like tree trunks before branching towards the ceiling, where a central opening reveals a beige plaster surface illuminated by concealed cove lighting.

At the heart of the restaurant, a glossy white bar follows a sinuous form, its front clad in shimmering fluted tiles finished with crystal silver leaf. Behind it, illuminated Corian creates a glowing backdrop.

A large ovoid window opens towards an outdoor terrace, with operable glass panels connecting the dining room to views across the University of Southern California campus and towards Downtown Los Angeles.

“The design incorporates elements of cinematic storytelling, including framing, light, scale and atmosphere, while pairing high-tech materials with handcrafted details,” the team said.

That cinematic approach extends to the restaurant’s purpose within the wider museum. Open to museum visitors and the general public for lunch and dinner, Skywalker Grill offers an American-style menu built around California-grown ingredients, including Wagyu beef and honey ricotta sourced from Skywalker Ranch.

Set within a 13-acre landscaped site near Exposition Park, the Lucas Museum is dedicated to narrative art and storytelling, with galleries, theatres and educational spaces housed within MAD’s otherworldly building.

With its curved timber, layered lighting and deliberately irregular geometry, Skywalker Grill continues that storytelling inside, making the restaurant feel less like an amenity inserted into the museum and more like another chapter of its architecture.

Images by Tom McGovern via Dezeen