D’Espresso

D’Espresso just opened a new coffee bar, a block away from the New York Public Library at Bryant Park. They wanted the place to look like "a library but (...) more interesting".
Anurag Nema, the founder of nemaworkshop, a Manhattan design firm, came up with an interesting design concept: "Take the ordinary and turn it on its side". The result is mind blowing and is keeping to the design statement promise - the coffee bar looks just like a library, but flipped on its side. Check out for example, the globe lights that are hung sideways from a wall...

If you find it all disorienting, that’s the idea. Nema’s inspiration was the famous space-station stewardess scene from Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey. It’s just like the trippy feeling one gets after one too many espressos on an empty stomach.


P.S. The D’Espresso cafe and the ever growing designs that uses books for decoration (rather than for reading), made me think of the interesting relationship we have with printed books nowadays.
Following yesterday's post, I reckon that even though we consume more and more digital readings and the attraction of electronic devices such as iPad is in huge rise, we're still fond of the idea of being surrounded by books.
While not so many of us are the proud owners of impressive home libraries these days, we didn't give up the dream. And so we are finding more and more ways to turn our beloved libraries from their 3D form of wonderful smelling old books and glorious covers into a 2D easy-to-maintain-environment-friendly stunning fake.

Do you think that one day, just as the vinyl records almost extincted from our world, the only place where we would find real paper books, will be in vintage shops and state libraries?



Via Co. Design