VENICE—It was a brilliant idea: Take water from a Venetian canal, purify it and create an espresso to serve at this fall’s Venice Architecture Biennale. But the project, proposed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, didn’t quite percolate with government authorities, who declined to approve it. “They didn’t give us any official reason,” says architect David Allin. “We had documentation that it would work.” Perhaps the joe could be brewed closer to home, using water from the Hudson River, which flows outside the design firm’s Chelsea headquarters, and sold at Bottino takeout for $2 a shot. It would give new meaning to the term “art world watering hole.”

"The Orient Espresso" originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2008 Table of Contents.