Leeser Architecture explores notions of the everyday in three different New York City venues: Glass Bar, as well as Bot and Pod restaurants

By Cynthia Davidson

Thomas Leeser

Thomas Leeser, AIA, believes that restaurant design is mired in nostalgia, and wants to move it into the future, but I see his three recent New York City commissions—Bot, Pod, and Glass—as attempts to wrestle with the everyday: the ordinary acts of eating, eating without seeing, seeing without thinking. "The everyday is the most resistant to change," he says. "How do you theorize it? How do you critique it?"

Leeser takes on the everyday in shades of black, white, and gray at Glass, in the trendy neighborhood of Chelsea, where this restrained palette puts emphasis on his façade: a large square of deep blue glass framed by frosted white panes. Meanwhile, a mile or so downtown, Leeser has played out the everyday game entirely differently at Bot, a neighborhood trattoria. Sitting in the garden at Bot, with laundry hanging overhead and the hum of air conditioners all around, is an otherworldly experience. As approaches to interior architecture, the subtlety of Glass and the heat of Bot are like salt and pepper: Both may be set on the table, but their effects are very different. The holder that keeps them together is the restaurant Pod, across the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

See the September, 2001 issue of Architectural Record for the full story. See the people and products behind Glass, Bot and Pod.

Glass	Pod Restaurant
Walkthough | Specs	Walkthough | Specs
Bot
Walkthough | Specs	Walkthough | Specs

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