New York-based Spaced Agency lifts Chinatown’s beloved Wo Hop restaurant to street level, translating its storied basement aesthetic into a restrained, memory-rich architecture that honors nearly a century of service.
Their recent project for Wo Hop—a beloved, nearly 90-year-old restaurant on Mott Street—brings the cult basement eatery up to street level for the first time. Rather than rebranding or refining, the studio has chosen to excavate meaning from the site’s own material memory, extending its basement vernacular upward in what they describe as an act of “architectural archaeology.”
The new street-level dining room feels like a mirror held up to the space below: bright-red tiled booths trace the length of the wall, echoing the guardrails of the original basement entrance, while illuminated shelving acts as an interior continuation of the restaurant’s iconic boxed awning. Even the thin strip of red tile beneath the front window repeats this language of continuity, a gesture that ties the new space back to the one that has fed New Yorkers since 1938.
Inside, Spaced Agency resists the temptation to stylize. The checked teal-and-white flooring and rope detail running between wainscotting and drywall lend texture without nostalgia. The designers have intentionally left the walls blank—a curatorial decision that grants the restaurant’s future diners permission to inscribe their own history. It’s an inversion of typical renovation logic: the architecture makes room for time, for accumulation, for the patina of everyday use.
Objects populate the new space with understated rhythm. Rows of lucky cat figurines occupy the front shelves, giving way to framed staff portraits and personal collectibles as one moves deeper into the room. The effect is of a slow fade—from public charm to private intimacy—reflecting Wo Hop’s multigenerational story and its enduring community.
Functionally, the expansion is seamless. The basement kitchen remains the operational heart, connected via dumbwaiter and a discreet staff staircase. The spatial flow between the “Upstairs” and “Downstairs” maintains the restaurant’s unbroken rhythm of service, even as Spaced Agency subtly modernizes the structure. The new red-tiled volume, running perpendicular to Mott Street, feels both archetypal and specific—an urban train car carrying decades of collective memory forward.
Wo Hop Upstairs is less a redesign than a respectful continuation. Spaced Agency’s intervention translates the warmth of the basement into daylight, letting the restaurant’s legacy breathe on the street it helped define.
