From afar, the walls at this Gowanus restaurant look like they’re made from grey fabric — but they’re actually made from concrete bricks poured into empty bags of flour from the resident bakery. Concrete masonry unit? More like cookie masonry unit! Sorry.
Each block was made from an empty, 23kg bag of King Arthur flour — emptied by the local baker — which were turned into two conventional formworks: One for “baguettes”, the larger blocks, and one for “boules of brioche”, which are brick-sized. At the building site, the designers at Latent Productions poured and cured 1000 of the units (which, adorably, they call “belly blocks“) to create a wall of bulging concrete along the length of the space.
Today, the space is home to Gowanus bakery and restaurant Runner and Stone. Go check it out if you’re in Brooklyn — until sugar-printed buildingsbecome a reality, it’s as close to gastronomical architecture as we’re going to get. [Archinect; Latent Productions]