The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.

The glass sidewalks of SoHo are amazing. Many are paved over or blocked or cracked or covered up, but at night some of them still glow from subterranean lights. I’ve never been under these sidewalks, but I imagine the basements of SoHo having a spooky, ethereal luminescence from all these little marble-like lites. They are some of my favorite sidewalks in the world.

Maybe when the weather warms a bit I’ll take night pictures…

That detail—a small wall made of cast coffee cup tops—stuck with me.  I heard one of the architects (I forget now which) talk about it and show a some slides a few years ago, and I haven’t forgotten. I wish I could have seen it.  Maybe I’ll have to recreate it myself some day…

Last night was the longest night of the year. I celebrated with a feast at Momofuku Ssam Bar in the East Village. There are one or two other places you can read about the food, so I’ll just tell you a bit about the architecture.

I didn’t take any pictures myself last night—it was too dim inside for my little camera to see clearly and too cold outside to practice fine motor skills—but as usual, there are plenty of other people who have posted things to the web. [Edit: this just in—here are Paul's pix from last night...]

The outside is particularly funky at the moment; the skeleton of some partially-deconstructed scaffolding sketches a kind of ghost courtyard on the sidewalk out front. Inside, things are sleeker and simpler. Walls are covered with thin bars of dark stained wood arranged to flow from front to back. Tables are large slabs of similarly deep-reddish-brownish wood with wooden stools as well. Long narrow windows follow the flow as well (one is told to store one’s wrap in the nook, which is convenient though coats come out chilled at the end of the night). Oddly, the (stone I think?) tiles on the floor are square, breaking the rhythm a bit.

I especially liked the drop ceiling panels that were the same color and texture, but with gaps between for fire sprinklers to hide that added a darker accent to the wood joints.

We were a convivial group of 11 crowded around one of the big wooden tables, which was cozy and conductive to passing of plates and pork. The seating was fine on the bench side of things (though a bit spare), but I felt a bit bad for those on stools with no backs.

Overall the restaurant aims squarely at the sweet spot of luxurious minimalism, decadent austerity. And I gotta say, rich simplicity is a weakness of mine. Basic shapes with straightforward materials, but chosen and crafted to make the textures and colors glow is a very wonderful kind of design, and Momofuku Ssam Bar managed it pretty well with a warm, enveloping wood interior that’s clean enough not to clutter a narrow space, but cozy enough to let us forget the dark cold night outside while feasting with friends.

Paul and I went here earlier this week.  I’m pretty willing to have a drink anywhere with a sign this great (it’s as good a way to pick a new place to try as any, I think), and The Dublin did not disappoint.

Here are some farmy, summery memories for a wet winter day: pictures from Public Farm 1 (the 2008 installment of PS1′s Young Architect series).  I’ll add some words tomorrow, but for now you can look below (and click to see bigger versions) or head to Flickr for the slide show…

In a way this is just a spiffed-up version of the livejournal blog I started for my trip two years ago to Rome and Istanbul but left off updating a while ago. This is roomier and more customizable and just, you know, less livejournally.

In another way it’s a kind of extension of my old webzine wburg.com, which I handed off when I left for architecture school. My interests have shifted a bit since then and I’m more interested in writing and drawing and photographing now than editing, but I still feel fondly toward that site.

I have big ideas_big ideas!_for this site (I hope it will become a launch pad for all kinds of projects), but for now I’ll leave off with this:

How amazing and wonderful are the stainless steel coffee carts that caffeinate New York (and maybe other cities? I’ve never seen them elsewhere_have you?) every weekday. A tiny streamlined room of pillowed stainless steel with windows to display donuts (just point and choose), urns to store coffee, and wheels on which to roll away when the city-wide coffee break is over. All that piloted by some of the nicest New Yorkers I’ve met. And they will give you coffee and a donut for less than $2! Genius.

The only downside is that these creatures are morning-glory-like: come noon they all fold up and roll away into what I like to imagine are shiny subterranean grottos where they rest and replenish themselves for the next frantic weekday morning.

The whole thing is small enough to be pushed by hand, though usually has a hitch so it can be towed (coffee and donut road trip anyone?) Mobile architecture made of pillowed stainless steel—a miniature shiny diner you can just hose down at the end of the day. What’s not to like about that? And no, I have not yet seen the movie, but it’s in the ole Netflix queue. In the mean time I’ll just keep marvelling at these little miracles of modern architecture. If only they’d stick around into the afternoon…