Concept Sketch

The café has a mix of rustic and warm atmospheres – the walls are of aged plaster, and are lined with wood paneling adorned with three antique clocks that actually do not tell the exact time of day (for all three pairs of hands tell different times), and the furniture available is limited as well as old-fashioned.

Floor Plan

While the unassuming establishment only offers limited seating: 3 at the bar counter and 3 two-seaters for customers, there is only ONE specific seat in this café that will allow time travel. Once back in time, customers can't leave the seat, the only people in the past who can be met are ones who have already visited the café. Whatever happens in the past, the present won't change; and, most importantly, the customer has to return to the present before their cup of coffee goes cold.

Sections

In the book, we meet 4 patrons who have their own reasons for wanting to go back in time: a businesswoman confronting her significant other who left her for a job overseas, a wife trying to find a letter written by her Alzheimer-stricken husband, a bar owner wanting to see her sister one last time, and a mother trying to visit the future and meet the daughter she never got the chance to know.

Isometric Model

Café Funiculi Funicula is a windowless basement café, with tan walls of earthen plaster that seemingly paint its interior in a sepia hue, and its chestnut brown pillars with wooden beams that cut across the ceiling. The place offers no air-conditioning, but mysteriously remains cool even on the hottest months of the year, the only source for ventilation in this place is a large wooden bladed ceiling fan. Along with the rustic tone of the interior, lighting is only provided by six shaded lamps hanging from the ceiling, as well as a single wall lamp near the entrance.