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Cooler than Cool

William Bostwick -- Interior Design, 10/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

firm:scalar architecture
site: new york

It wasn't long after Red Mango and Pinkberry started sprouting all over town that cafés specializing in Asian-style tart-sweet, topping-heavy frozen dessert pioneered their trademark yogurt chic. You could spot one of them down the block: a white cube dotted with stylish lamps and chairs and strewn with glossy magazines—part mod manicurist, part art gallery. When Scalar Architecture principal Julio Salcedo designed his first New York yogurt café, Flurt, in 2007, the interior was somewhat similar. "Flurt had to be more product-focused," Salcedo explains, because its offerings were still new. Places like it are now common enough to allow him to experiment when Flurt's owner called him back to design Recess, a yogurt café and coffee bar.

"Most yogurt places aren't about anything," Salcedo says. Recess unquestionably is, even if that startlingly different something is a bit dizzying to define. Two-tone stripy bamboo plywood, camouflaging almost every available surface of the 840-square-foot storefront, gives it an Austin Powers look at first glance—psychedelic, baby. The light and dark striations offer "different moods in the same material," Salcedo adds, and those moods are amplified by the changing colors of LEDs installed above the ceiling's jagged steel fins. It's a space as exciting to be in as it was to design. The flooring wraps into walls to lean on, banquettes to sit on, a bar to be served at, and a long central table modeled after a skate-park fun box. With the bamboo so graphic, thinking of it as wallpaper isn't a stretch.

"This place has to be able to mutate," Salcedo continues. "It's multitasking." Close to New York University, the neighborhood is overrun during the school year but considerably quieter come summer. And the interior works full as easily as empty. On a slower day, two couples are sitting in opposite corners. ("My favorite spots," he admits.) When it's busier, customers can rest their cups in holders that cantilever from the pair of lean-to walls in the front. "With so little floor space, we thought that the walls should be occupied, too," he says. The holders are equally handy whether the cups contain afternoon yogurts or, when the overhead spots turn off and the ambient lights go on, late-night espressos.

Airy café or crowded bar, winter or summer, Recess expresses Salcedo's dual architectural philosophy. Educated in what he calls Madrid's "sober," construction-oriented university system—think Rafael Moneo's straitlaced stone and glass—but inspired by the more freewheeling artistry of Barcelona's Antoni Gaudí, Salcedo is a self-proclaimed "student of both worlds." The split personality of Recess is like the yogurt sold there, a perfect foundation either for healthy mango slices or for diet-damning chocolate chips.

Photography by Kris Tamburello.

FROM FRONT GLEN RAVEN: AWNING FABRIC (EXTERIOR). THROUGHOUT SMITH & FONG CO. THROUGH ROBIN REIGI: PLYWOOD. HERMAN MILLER THROUGH DESIGN WITHIN REACH: CHAIRS. McHONE INDUSTRIES: CUSTOM TABLE LEGS. SPRADLING INTERNATIONAL: BANQUETTE UPHOLSTERY. IKEA: STOOLS. CAESARSTONE: COUNTER MATERIAL. LEDWAVES: LED FIXTURES. TECH LIGHTING: CEILING FIXTURES. MSD VISUAL: CUSTOM SIGNAGE. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO.: PAINT. SBLD STUDIO: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. TAN ENGINEERING: MEP. SCK TEAM WORK: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.