Brazilian designer Isay Weinfeld has been tasked with designing the new home for the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York, which has just closed its iconic Manhattan home of 56 years.

The Four Seasons’ owners are relocating from the Seagram Building after being unable to negotiate an extension to their current lease. They are widely expected to move the restaurant south, to a spot on Park Avenue.

After winning a private competition, Weinfeld has the difficult task of creating a new site which will compare with the restaurant’s former home, designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. The space, loved by New York celebrities and power brokers, was widely considered a Modernist masterpiece. Earlier this year it won the restaurant design Icon Award at the James Beard Foundation Awards.

In an interview with The Telegraph newspaper, the designer said: "It’s an honour to design a space like that. I don’t know if it’s possible to be at the same level as van der Rohe and Johnson, and also the expectations in a city like New York of such an iconic place are very strong, but I’ve had my practice for 43 years now and I feel secure that it’s come at the right moment in my professional life."

Design fans mourning the loss of the original restaurant will have an opportunity on 26 July to bid for the Four Season’s old furniture in a special auction.