By the time the well-established gastronomy team from Mochi – known for their exciting take on Japanese food – approached us for a new concept we had just emerged from the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The team wanted to convert a café prominently located at the heart of the Vorgatenmarkt in Vienna’s 2nd district into a restaurant pop-up. It was late 2020 and none of us had a clear idea what the future had in store, much less how design and hospitality would react. As a response to the uncertainty of the moment, we decided to focus our attention on a low budget furnishing concept that would take into consideration a sense of well-being in a time of social distancing without sacrificing the communal aspects of dining out, especially in a quintessentially public space: a market. In addition, the design also needed to communicate playfulness and joy, which were in high demand after a long lockdown. The space is organized in rows of custom-made modular benches, each catering to varying sizes of dining groups. The bench backs are purposely taller than needed to create a partial encapsulation of the dining table, a way to make a clear division between dining groups. Vertical acrylic twin-wall panels further add to the dining perimeter yet maintain an openness through their translucency. The assembly concept for the benches reduces volume and material as a way to avoid excessive clutter. Much like a house of cards, the benches are formed by leaning and intersecting planes of dark blue MDF boards. The size and weight of boards, with the aid of spacers, provide stiffness. Along with dark petroleum painted surfaces, the existing floor screed, bare bulb pendants covered in coffee filters, and a busy open kitchen/bar, the space presents a low-tech environment alternating between two experiences: At head height, while entering a moving through the space, the hustle and bustle remains in clear sight. However, when seated an intimate dining experience emerges where the benches provide a shoulder high datum of semi-privacy.