The Blogazine

The Editorial: Origami Coffee

I don’t know about you, but I am tired. Partly because it’s nearly 4am, partly because it’s October. The slow and agonising build-up to the holiday season has begun (Starbucks has started serving its cosier, fattier, spiced-ier coffee contrivances), which means we’re all negatively charged bundles of stress lately. And so this week, I shall spare the world a wordy diatribe and will instead fold origami while I brew a little coffee.

There’s something intensely romantic about getting intimate with a square of paper. You come to know its essence. (Fold.) Its zen. (Crease.) Its materiality. (Tuck.) And ultimately its limits. (Rip. Oops. That stegosaurus is too difficult. On to something else…) But from crane to ninja star to water bomb to flower, that something so utterly straightforward is capable of taking on infinite variations in symbolic form is positively mind-blowing. Koolhaas would be nowhere without origami. And as with everything, it’s all in how you bend it.

(Water’s boiling.) So while I may be tired (especially after sitting through two hours of a droning, predictable US presidential debate), the night is young! It’s raining here in London (shocker), which lends to the already pervasive serenity of 4am. Fold. Crease. Tuck.

I can make coffee slowly, carefully at 4am. No rush to get out the door and onto the early train. It isn’t for a jolt now, but rather a shameless hedonistic indulgence. And much like the origami, its seeming straightforwardness can give way to great complexity when considered more closely. Consider your coffee well and it, too, becomes craft. Fold. Crease. Tuck.

(It’s ready.) So, slow down this week. It changes everything.

For world-class coffee in the spirit of 4am origami indulgence, check out London’s Prufrock (and sit at the bar while you take it in), Brooklyn’s Blue Bottle Coffee or LA’s extraordinary Demitasse (swoon over the Japanese brewing equipment). And just for the mood’s sake, watch this gorgeous film about brewing in a Chemex.