Inside the Egg-Themed House That’s Cooking in the Lower East Side
Eggs: fry them, scramble them, hard boil them, soft boil them, poach them, bake them, baste them. There are endless ways to eat an egg, but has anyone thought to consume them as an interactive art exhibit?
“Eggs just popped into my head and I thought, why not make an immersive pop-up space that’s designed around eggs?” says Buibui Xu, an artist and soon-to-be owner of a tea shop in SoHo. Over the weekend, Xu, who hails from China, opened The Egg House, a multi-sensory egg-themed pop-up in the Lower East Side.
Xu studied accounting at Baruch College, but says she’s always been interested in media and restaurants — and, as one might have guessed, eggs. She conceived of the idea for The Egg House in December and enlisted the help of Objectseen’s technology team and 3T Studios’ interior designers. Together they realized her dream of a fully immersive, life-size egg house, which now occupies a 3,300-square-foot space next to the Public Hotel.
The exhibit is comprised of six rooms: a foyer, kitchen, hallway, pool, garden and secret room. The last of these is technology-enabled and incorporates clues about the main character of the house, who, naturally, is an egg.
“When we were developing this whole idea of this egg house, we didn’t have a main character,” explains Anji Liu of 3T Studios. “If we [created] an actual character, that would be more relatable to our audience and people will feel like they’re interacting with a specific thing.” The team decided upon an egg named Ellis who has just moved to New York and landed a job as a chef.
The pop-up integrates sound and scent, and food items from vendors such as The Egg Shop and Eggloo are available. There is also a gift shop offering egg-shaped merchandise.
Xu hopes to bring the pop-up to other cities once the New York leg wraps at the end of the month, but in the meantime, she wants people — Millennials, couples, friends, families, tourists, egg enthusiasts alike — to have fun with it.
“I didn’t get to go to the Museum of Ice Cream in New York, but I heard that they had extensions in other cities, which I think is a really great idea because they turn people’s fantasy into a real place where they can go and have fun with friends,” she says. “I think everyone knows the food. It’s not something obscure, it’s our daily food and if I come up with this space, everyone can relate to it.”
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