Recently we celebrated a friend’s birthday at the rarified 12-seat sushi bar at Brushstroke, chef David Bouley’s collaborative Japanese restaurant in Tribeca, NYC. Designed by the Japanese firm Super Potato, the interiors are serene and graceful, evocative of a Japanese temple melded with modernist architectural elements: stone, reclaimed timber, salvaged, weathered steel. The most stunning detail were walls clad with 25,000 books, their covers removed, edges facing out, stacked floor-to-ceiling to create a neutral-colored, woven pattern. They resemble wooden blocks, though knowing that they’re books gives them a much bigger effect and mystery.
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Although a huge project, it does seem do-able. It looks like they anchored the book/bricks with duct tape…
…ripping the covers off unwanted books gives them a neutral look that turns them into ‘bricks’…
Think of all the scrap books that could find new life as a beautiful interior….
All photos via Brushstroke.
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Me thinks there is something much more secure than duct tape attaching all that vertical weight. A collapse would certainly injure anyone sitting near.
I love the look and just think how quiet it would be inside all that paper.
Fill us in when you find out more details – books are still a deal compared to other materials priced by the square foot.
The sushi bar is in that room. It IS very quiet and tranquil. Come to think of it, a sort of padded cell. (:
Wonderful. But I cannot but feel nostalgic for the words that are lost.
If the “walls” were made of old textbooks or even trashy self-help or bad bestsellers, this wouldn’t bother me, but I always have a hard time with books used decoratively —
My first thought was “cool”. My next thought was “how do they clean them?”