Hungarian Pastry Shop Storefront
2022
New York City
Commercial (In Progress)
250 SF
With Francois Leininger
This project reimagined the storefront of an Upper West Side cultural landmark by translating Yanni Posnakoff’s original 1970s paintings into mosaic panels that echo the spirit of the cafe as both wall and image.
2022
New York City
Commercial (In Progress)
250 SF
With Francois Leininger
This project reimagined the storefront of an Upper West Side cultural landmark by translating Yanni Posnakoff’s original 1970s paintings into mosaic panels that echo the spirit of the cafe as both wall and image.
We were asked to replace the storefront of an Upper West Side cultural landmark, an institution for both the neighborhood and students at adjacent Columbia University. In addition to updating the design, we considered how to preserve the existing paintings by the painter Yanni Posnakoff that were originally installed in the 1970s. These paintings characterized both the facade and the spirit of the cafe, but were damaged and faded from time. For the project, translated them into mosaic tiled panels that would become the facade itself, a muraled surface that would do double-duty as both wall and image. We wanted to avoid reproducing the paintings, and instead abstracted key and recognizable components that we floated over color fields—an echo of the original, frozen into an architectural detail.