SURFACE - JULIAN SCHNABEL - NOVEMBER 2013

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SURFACE 18

28 ideas in design

Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien talk about their family-like staff and a new book. A Baccarat anthology celebrates the crystal maker’s 250th. Ferragamo creates a special capsule collection for an L.A. pop-up. A French museum disrupts a historic site with a new building for its experi-mental architecture collection.

32 product

Photos: Victor Prado

80 fashion

Photos: Sarah Silver Styling: Justin Min

156 gallery

A museum in Italy for furniture maker Poltrona Frau exhibits the brand’s seminal furniture pieces and the evolution of its celebrated style.

Curator: Michele De Lucchi

167 culture club

A photo portfolio capturing the fashion, art, and design cognoscenti at recent openings, events, and discus-sions hosted by Surface and other cultural organizations.

CONTENTS NO. 103

departments

22 Masthead24 Editor’s Letter26 Contributors 38 Bar40 Hotel42 Restaurant44 Proposal 61 Transport 62 Travel64 Art

66 Material 67 Auction68 Books70 On Time74 Survey78 Endorsement176 Object

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SURFACE 20

114 american influence Ingenuity and tireless determination

distinguish these innovators, entre-preneurs, and cultural leaders.

116 peter brant & julian schnabel

128 susan sellers

130 max levai

132 summit series

136 indianapolis museum of art

138 shinola

142 michael kimmelman

148 gary friedman

152 alex calderwood

cover: Julian Schnabel in Paris photographer: Grant Cornett

CONTENTS NO. 103

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brand development

director Marc Lotenberg [email protected] Twitter: @marclotenberg

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chief executive officer Marc Lotenberg

controller Nathalie Lascase [email protected]

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editorial and design

executive editor Spencer Bailey [email protected] Twitter: @spencer_bailey Instagram: @spencercbailey

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associate art director Jada Vogt [email protected] Instagram: @jadavogt

managing editor Jeremy Lehrer Twitter: @unifyingtheory

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fashion editor Justin Min [email protected] Instagram: @_justinmin_

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digital imaging Traian Stanescu

special projects editor Bettina Korek Twitter: @bettina_korek Instagram: @bettinakorek

contributing editors David Basulto (ArchDaily), Jeff Carvalho (Selectism), Marina Cashdan, Julia Cooke, Benjamin Clymer (Hodinkee), Tomas Delos Reyes, Natasha Edwards, Steve Kroeter (Designers & Books), Seamus Mullen, Nonie Niesewand, Stephen J. Pulvirent (Hodinkee), Ben Pundole (A Hotel Life), David Rockwell, Jonathan Schultz, Ian Volner

contributing photographers Grant Cornett, Adrian Gaut, Dean Kaufman, Mark Mahaney, Ogata, David Schulze, Yoshiaki Sekine

interns Youngrang Choo, Ella Riley-Adams, Suna Sim

Surface magazine is published 10 times annually by Surface Media LLC.

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SURFACEMASTHEAD

SURFACE 22

In preparation for my interview with Julian Schnabel for this issue’s cover story, I followed the regimen I always do prior to a big interview: I researched as much as I could on the artist. But when I arrived in Paris this fall to meet with him—we sat in an untended garden, pictured here, behind the residence of the fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa—I let go of nearly every-thing I’d learned. Sure, I asked questions based on what I knew, steering the conversation this way or that, but mostly I listened.

When I asked Schnabel how he starts a painting, he described a process that’s strikingly similar to how I begin an interview.

“You take everything you know, and you get to that place where you do something you don’t know anything about,” he said. “That confusion, the not knowing, is the nature of it.” This ethos of embracing the unknown exemplifies much of what we do at Surface, and in the case of the American Influence package, it’s largely how each of the 10 subjects featured has found success.

Take the industrialist Peter Brant (page 116), who through bold art collecting and an ambitious foundation has shown that exhibitions of museum quality and scale can be displayed in an unconventional, less-restricted way. Or consider the watch- and bike-making brand Shinola (page 138), which is reawakening the manufacturing possibilities of Detroit. Or New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman (page 142), who’s giving his high-profile position a much-needed dose of public advocacy. Or Restoration Hardware chairman emeritus Gary Friedman (page 148), who in an unexpected move is bringing his brand into the art world with the opening of a Manhattan gallery.

As you read the issue, I trust you’ll experience the world as these influencers do: as audacious interveners. “I love the idea of intervening,” Schnabel told me. “It just seems like some-thing’s never finished.” Like the garden I sat in with the art-ist, the world at large is one disorganized jumble, and finding deeper meaning in it can—and should—be a fun, enterprising endeavor. Here’s to the relentless pursuit of the unexplored, the uncharted, the unfamiliar, the never-been-done.

Editor’s Letter

BY SPENCER BAILEY

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DAVID ROCKWELL

Architect, designer, and new Surface contributing editor David Rockwell created a scheme for a Citi Bike helmet with his firm, Rockwell Group, for the magazine’s debut Proposal column (page 44). “It was a real challenge to dream up a solution in a few days,” Rockwell says. “We typically spend months on R&D for our products.” Luckily, the team had a few cyclists to help with the brainstorming. “The members of our firm’s triathlon team gave us a lot of feedback,” Rockwell says. Rockwell Group, whose projects include W Hotels properties in New York, Paris, and Singapore as well as the JetBlue Terminal at JFK International Airport, is currently at work on a portable theater for next spring’s TED Conference in Vancouver.

SARAH SILVER

Photographer Sarah Silver got her start after she was named a Surface Avant Guardian in 2001. “I started my career in the pages of this magazine,” says Silver, who has shot for clients includ-ing Vogue, Nike, Swarovski, and Target. She returned to the magazine to photograph the wom-en’s fashion feature (page 82), focusing on how denim is worn today, and the men’s showcase (page 100), which takes thematic cues from Robert Frank’s book The Americans. The men’s story was shot in the collective workspace Neuehouse, Surface’s new home base. “Each surface in the building has a distinct texture and mood,” Silver says. “I could have shot three whole stories in there and never run out of ideas.”

MARINA CASHDAN

Surface contributing editor Marina Cashdan wrote about L.A.-based artist Aaron Curry for the Art column (page 64) and profiled Marlborough Chelsea gallerist Max Levai (page 130) for this issue’s American Influence package. She spoke to the latter at his gallery’s Broome Street outpost, which recently hosted an art show with a rather unusual focus: pizza. “My experience interviewing Max was semi-surreal,” Cashdan says. “A lot of pizza and intensely white walls.” Currently the editorial director at the website Artsy, Cashdan has published work in Art in America, Wallpaper, British Vogue, and Interview.

PAUL PLEWS

Photography wasn’t always part of London-based photographer Paul Plews’s plan. “Moving away to art college was a strange step,” Plews says. “But my fears were allayed when I lasted the course and showed some potential with a camera.” Now, Plews shoots for clients includ-ing Dove, Icon, and Architectural Digest. For American Influence, he captured Ace Hotel Group co-founder Alex Calderwood at the just-opened Ace hotel in east London (page 152).

“What stood out was how well the Ace reflects Alex’s character,” Plews says. “Photograph-ing him there felt like the perfect setting for a man interested in collaboration, creativity, and individuality.”

DAVE KIM

When not editing these pages, Surface senior editor Dave Kim teaches writing classes for architecture students at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and writes short fiction. For this issue, he visited the architecture studio of duo Tod Williams and Billie Tsien (page 28) and wrote about the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s new design galleries (page 136). “I loved watching Tod and Billie being photographed for the story,” Kim says. “They’re clearly happy and at ease with each other, but you can tell that they’re very autonomous beings.” Prior to joining Surface, Kim wrote about everything from White Castle to tour buses for The Brooklyn Rail.

TIM KLEIN

Chicago-based photographer Tim Klein captured Charles Venable, director of the India-napolis Museum of Art, and Lara Huchteman, the museum’s exhibition designer, in the IMA’s new design galleries (page 136). “They were very strict about not letting Charles and Lara sit on the furniture in the exhibit,” Klein says. “When they did anything, sit or stand, they had to put down protective sheets.” Klein, who has shot for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Burberry, and Men’s Journal, is a co-founder of the soon-to-launch CoEdit Foundation, which will curate for-sale collections of unpublished images by leading photographers.

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STUDIO VISIT Tod Williams & Billie TsienThe architects on their informal workplace, the potential loss of an iconic project, and their just-released book on cabinets of curiosities.

INTERVIEW BY DAVE KIM

Your studio occupies a stately pre-war building facing Central Park in New York. But the space inside, where your staff of 31 works, is surprisingly intimate. What’s it like to work here?

Tod Williams: We don’t have doors, except for the bathroom and the front doors. I like to feel the pulse of the space, the pulse of the people who work here, and I want them to feel ours, too.

Billie Tsien: It’s an informal space. People work very, very hard, but we also want them to feel a kind of autonomy—you come and go when it makes sense. We’ve always talked about this group as a family. We expect everybody to have a sense of what the emotional tone is in the office and work together to make it a good one. Everybody has a dish day, a day to empty the garbage, a bathroom day. We’re all responsible for everything. We ask everybody, when they work on a project, to be responsible for all

aspects. They’re aware of the billing, they write the letters—it’s not divided into little segments.

You’ve often called architecture a “service.” What do you mean by that? Williams: I don’t regard architecture as art. In the end, we are working for other people, and we want to elevate the experience for them. It gives us a sense of humility, which I think we need to have.

Tsien: When I was in architecture school, one of the instructors came by the studio late one night. He was drunk. He must have had a very bad meeting, and he just stood in front of the people who were working there and said, “Architecture is a dirty service industry.” And he turned around and walked out. I remember being sort of horrified, thinking, dirty service industry? But over time, what I realized is that to embrace the act of service is to not feel servitude. It’s about an elevation, embracing things people ask you to do and trying to go beyond them.

Perhaps it’s about embracing suffering, too. One of your most well-known projects, the American Folk Art Museum in New York, could be destroyed soon to make room for a new MoMA expansion. How have you dealt with this news?

Williams: We always believe that any work we do will be around much longer than our lives. We did it with love, the best intentions—and with people with the best intentions. But they weren’t realistic enough, I guess, and I don’t think, looking back, that we were either. It was a serious effort, and it cost more than anyone would’ve liked—but was also a thimble in terms of what a building at that time would’ve cost. I don’t regret it. I of course feel very bad about it, and I’m certainly hoping that the best will come out of it, which is that [Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the lead architects on MoMA’s expansion] will find a way to incorporate it.

Tsien: I have partly an emotional response to it as a project and also a larger concern about a sanding away of bumpy parts of the city. For many years, we lived above Carnegie Hall with a very odd collection of people who had studios there. It was one of the more bumpy parts of the city. There were people who made violins, Bill Cunningham, a woman who had a crazy pipe organ—it was this weird, interesting, knobby thing. Part of living in New York is being surprised by things.

Your latest book, Wunderkammer (Yale University Press), is a chroni-cle of your exhibit at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, for which you sent boxes to 35 of your friends and asked them to fill them with inspiring objects. Why did you decide to do this?

Tsien: David Chipperfield [who curated the Biennale] chose the theme “Common Ground.” What is it that unites us as human beings, as architects and designers? It seemed to be very little about what it is you do your-self. Visual people love things—we love our objects and love having stuff around us. So we were very interested to see what people would say were things that inspired them. [Each box] became such an expression of the personalities of the people as we knew them. It’s like these wide-ranging personalities got condensed like juice into these boxes. We’d open one and say, “Oh my God, that’s Thom Mayne.”

A wunderkammer is commonly known as a “cabinet of curiosities.” What were some of the curiosities, the surprises?

Williams: We got one from our son [designer Kai Williams], who chopped his box up with his partner and broke the rules as it were.

Tsien: Tod thinks it’s Oedipal. He took the box that his parents gave him and cut it up into tiny little pieces.

You chose a venue at the Biennale that was basically an old shed and placed the boxes on open shelves. Why?

Williams: We wanted things not to be behind cases. We wanted it to be accessible and intimate, in the way our studio is. PH

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ARCHITECTURE FRAC Orléans

In the historic city of Orléans, France, located about an hour’s drive from Paris, centuries-old buildings make for surprising discoveries. At FRAC Orléans, though, more contemporary architectural encounters can be found: the museum houses one of the largest architecture col-lections in the world—comparable to those at the Centre Pompidou and MoMA, but with a focus on experimental work produced since the ’50s. Part of a decentralized network of cultural centers across France envisioned by President François Mitterrand in the ’80s with the mission of democratizing access to art and culture, FRAC Orléans recently opened its new, roughly 32,300-square-foot home, situated in a former military depot and renovated by Jakob + MacFarlane. The structure conveys the FRAC’s mission—and its relationship to the city—by blending the Paris-based firm’s radical, saddle-shaped design into the existing edifices around it. “We saw this opportunity to material-ize the experimental notion of the FRAC,” MacFarlane says, “through three chimneys of turbulent condition that [act as] oculi and let daylight inside.” The scheme also includes a light installation by the digital-art duo Electronic Shadow consisting of 14,000 LEDs that display visual patterns. —David Basulto, founder and executive editor of the website ArchDaily

TECH Motorola’s Moto X

When Google acquired Motorola in 2012, a small team of senior engi-neers found a rare opportunity for a cell phone company: to create a brand from scratch. “When we started Moto X, it was a blank sheet,” says Jim Wicks, Motorola’s senior vice president of consumer experi-ence design. “We got to decide what we wanted it to stand for going forward.” The resulting device, which runs on Android 4.2.2, packages advanced capabilities in a smooth case: The glass that covers the front surface is molded into a plastic backing, so it “feels like one seamless piece,” Wicks says. “We wanted to eliminate all the extras and display nothing but content.” A touch-free control system allows users to acti-vate Google’s search functions with their voices, and battery-efficient display technology makes it possible to isolate portions of the screen without entirely waking up the device—useful when it receives a text message or weather alert. On the Moto Maker website, currently avail-able through AT&T, users can customize their devices with a choice of 18 back plate colors, two front colors, and seven accent colors on features like the camera ring and volume key. “Designers tend to want to control everything,” Wicks says. “We wanted to give the consumer a say.” —Allie Weiss

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BOOK Baccarat 1764: Two Hundred and Fifty Years

On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the French crystal maker Baccarat—a brand synonymous with fine craftsmanship and luxury—entrepreneur Murray Moss and journalist Laurence Benaïm cel-ebrate the occasion with their insightful new book from Rizzoli. The company’s founding in 1764 was by permission of King Louis XV and the specifications of the volume fit its royal charter: 420 pages, 400 color illustrations, 6.3 pounds. The photographs inside reveal the beauty of the crystal, and an essay by Benaïm examines the influence of Baccarat around the globe. Philippe Starck and Marcel Wanders are among those who have collaborated with the brand on its designs, perhaps the most iconic being the bottle it produced for the House of Guerlain’s Shalimar perfume in 1925. Says Moss: “For her 16th birthday, my mother’s parents gave her a bottle of Shalimar. She lived to be 96 and claimed that she wore it every day of her life. When she died, her last will and testament was quite clear: Beside the marble urn which was to contain her ashes, her children should place not a photograph of her but a bottle of Shalimar.” —Steve Kroeter, editor-in-chief of the website Designers & Books

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RETAIL Ferragamo’s L.A. Pop-Up Shop

It’s surprising to find that a neighborhood as storied as Beverly Hills lacked a state-of-the-art performing arts venue until now. A decade in the making, the 2.5-acre Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts facility, designed by architect Zoltan Pali, opened its doors in October, adding a 500-seat theater to the historic 1934 Italianate-style Beverly Hills Post Office complex. In celebration, Italian fashion house Ferragamo—which made headway in Hollywood by catering to legends including Rita Hayworth, Audrey Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman—offered guests a peek at its spring/summer 2014 collection during the venue’s inaugural black-tie bash. It also set up a pop-up shop, open through November, carrying a special Los Angeles capsule collection. The assemblage is “an ode to Ferragamo’s history in Hollywood as an innovator,” creative director Massimiliano Giornetti says. In honor of the brand’s Hollywood history, the special pieces, including this metal cuff, echo Ferragamo’s iconic styles and are updated with forward-looking details such as Lucite heels, handwoven lambskin, and high-tech mesh. —Carren Jao

IDEAS IN DESIGN

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SELECT Tom Dixon for Adidas

When Adidas enlisted designers such as Stella McCartney, Jeremy Scott, and Yohji Yamamoto to create clothing for the brand, they brought ele-ments of high fashion into Adidas’s sportswear. But when British indus-trial designer Tom Dixon was brought to the label to create a capsule collection, he wanted to incorporate what he calls an “anti-fashion sen-sibility.” He succeeds with his Padded Coat, a down trench that converts into a sleeping bag, one of the all-in-one performance goods in Dixon’s collection for the spring/summer 2014 line (another is a backpack that transforms into a hanging garment bag). While the idea of a sleeping bag–coat hybrid may seem untrendy and even rebellious, it will appeal to those who can’t leave home without their multifunctional devices and accessories. It is an exemplar of design that achieves elegance through rigorous simplification. By stripping away extraneous material, Dixon creates a “survival kit” that assures two essential life requirements: sleep and warmth. The coat’s dual function, Dixon says, addresses “the way that we jump from work to play without enough time to consider changes of clothes.” Since sleep and warmth are universal needs, the Padded Coat (and, in fact, Dixon’s whole line) is unisex. —Jeff Carvalho and Elaine YJ Lee of the websites Selectism and Highsnobiety

EXHIBIT “Hello, My Name is Paul Smith” at London Design Museum

This month, London’s Design Museum mounts a retrospective on British fashion designer Paul Smith—but it isn’t just about clothing. The exhibition, titled “Hello, My Name is Paul Smith,” uses sound, video, and interactive rooms to transport visitors into the master tailor’s fantasti-cal world. Curated by Donna Loveday, who spearheaded the museum’s record-breaking Christian Louboutin show last year, the theatrical affair includes a recreation of Smith’s shoebox-sized first shop and ephemera-strewn office, famously crammed with gifts from doting fans. The museum partnered with Sony to create two digital presentations: In one, photographs and video clips give viewers glimpses of Smith’s creative vision; in the other, he reproduces his fall/winter 2013 mens-wear show via four massive projections—one on each wall—in 4K Ultra HD. At the same time, an anthology presents the clothier’s singular boutiques, relics from curious collaborations (a Leica camera, jerseys for the Giro d’Italia cycling race), and a selection of pivotal garments handpicked by Smith himself. A thoughtful exploration of his intuitive take on design, the exhibition offers a powerful immersive experience.

“We were keen to provide insight into who Paul is and how he works,” Loveday says. “He’s an interesting character, and that, in a way, has laid the foundation of the company’s lasting success.” —Tiffany Jow

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SURFACE

NEW YORK ACCENTSDesigners based in the Big Apple put their shine on these handmade accessories in metal and leather.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY VICTOR PRADO

PRODUCT

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Castillo necklace and Mira bangle (left); Aurora collar, Exeter bracelet, and Betka bangle (right), all Orly Genger by Jaclyn Mayer. Opposite: Oval open-cage clutch, Anndra Neen.

PRODUCT

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PRODUCT

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Skinner case (left) and Mason tote, Dillon des Prés Co. Opposite: Quetzal collar and Billie cuff, Jill Platner.

PRODUCT

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SURFACE

Double bar clutch cuff, Ribbon collar, and Reeve cuff, Aesa. Opposite: Douglas attaché, Will Leather Goods. Fedora, tie, and card case, Ovadia & Sons.

PRODUCT

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PRODUCT

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That

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With its contemporary edge, a new bronze-hued Chicago bar evokes the sophisticated side of an era past.

BY ELLA RILEY- ADAMS

“Accessible” is one term designer Thomas Schlesser uses to describe the new Jimmy Chicago bar at the James Chicago hotel, but in all outward appearances, the venue is elu-sive—true to the speakeasy archetype. “Your entry is through an unexpected sequence,” Schlesser says. “You have to pass through a small sandwich shop and an anonymous door before entering.”

The shop, also designed by Schlesser, is a bacon-themed eatery created by chef David Burke, and it presents a stark—and comic—contrast to the glamour within: Visitors step out of the space into a vestibule encircled by a sparkling chrome-bead curtain. Parting the silvery chains, they enter a windowless room given visual warmth by custom-designed upholstered chairs in earth tones, Plexiglass floor lamps by Pablo, and backlit wall paneling.

“The way I approach design is always to look for a cultural reference and precedent, [to give] a narrative direction to the space,” Schlesser says.

“We took our inspiration for these walls from

the wood-veneer paneling that’s ubiquitous in ’70s domestic lounges.” The paneling, which surrounds the space, “expands your view of the room,” Schlesser says, and invokes a retro sensibility minus the floral prints and macramé. Schlesser, a three-time James Beard Award winner and designer of Jimmy at the James New York, has carefully adapted the aesthetic for a contemporary crowd: Plush chairs invite long conversations, and squat, bevelled bronze tables provide a sturdy perch for dirty martinis.

The James Chicago sits on the Magnificent Mile, the stretch of Michigan Avenue known for luxurious shops and residences. But Jimmy Chicago’s unassuming entrance sets it apart from the area’s more traditional upscale environments. The bar is small—it seats only 40—but the room’s golden mirrors and suspended chrome tubular lights give it a grand, kaleidoscopic effect. Artistry extends to the back corridor, where prints by local photographers adorn the walls. Schlesser’s design process, too, depends on varied imagery.

“I surround myself with as many images that I can collect that have a point of reference,” he says. “Then I take those and reinterpret them—I’m not trying to create a space that looks like it existed in a previous time.” Though Jimmy is built on decades of nostalgia, sleek lines and modern lighting reflect its designer’s decidedly contemporary point of view.

Cocktail by Tomas Delos Reyes

INSPIRED BY JIMMY CHICAGO

The space has a Tom Ford aesthetic with a late ’70s vibe—it’s very sexy. I got a sensual feeling from the color of the fabrics, the drop lighting on the bar, and the metallic chain-link curtains. This is a drink for Lauren Hutton of the American Gigolo era. It’s foreplay in a glass.

2 ounces D’ussé cognac3⁄4 ounce black cherry juice1 dash of Angostura bitters1 dash of Bitter Truth mole bitters

Pour all ingredients into a stirring glass. Add ice. Stir. Strain cocktail over four ice cubes in a rocks glass. Garnish with a Maraschino cherry.

Tomas Delos Reyes is a mixologist and partner of the gastropub Jeepney in New York’s East Village.

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Integral form Customize, expand, reinvent – USM transforms imagination into unique compositions.

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SURFACE

With warm, welcoming tones, a hotel in Oslo has become a cultural hearth for the city.

In this column, we ask Ben Pundole, founder of the website A Hotel Life, to pick a new hotel that offers the best of hospitality design today.

BY ALLIE WEISS

Though the Thief hotel in Oslo, Norway, sits next to the sea on the small islet Tjuvholmen, it is far from a balmy beachside resort. “We have more winter than summer here,” says interior designer Anemone Wille Våge, of the Norwegian climate. “By the sea, it’s always really cold.” Part of the Design Hotels group and designed by Norwegian firm Mellbye Architects, the hotel has a facade of floor-to-ceiling windows that faces the fjord. Wille Våge feared that showcasing the gray sea and sky would bring a cold ambiance inside, but by filling the interiors with plush furnishings, rich tones, and velvety fabrics, she was able to keep the chill out. “It was important to make it a really comfortable environment,” she says.

With the hotel’s interiors, Wille Våge also hoped to challenge preconceptions about Norwegian design. “Oslo is a modern city,” she says. “But Scandinavian design can sometimes be too minimalistic and too cold.” The hotel’s location in an up-and-coming neighborhood means it can overturn those notions, even set the tone of a new Oslo. The property sits on a piece of land once occupied by a prison—the island’s name translates to

“Thief Islet,” referencing the criminals who were housed there—but is now filled with cafés, music venues, and art galleries. Three city guides created by the Thief in partnership with the Norwegian Center for Design and Architecture, style blogger Camilla Pihl, and radio host Asbjørn Slettemark point visitors to the best spots for things like Japanese cuisine, a cappuccino, or live music nearby. Norway’s year-round chill may be the only constant in a city whose design and cultural landscapes are always in motion, the Thief being one of the latest movements forward.

Lobby and Rooms

In a partnership with the Thief’s neighbor, the Renzo Piano–designed Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, the hotel fills its interiors with a rotating selection of artworks chosen by curator Sune Nordgren. Pieces by high-profile artists—including Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, and Sir Peter Blake—occupy the hotel’s public spaces, adding an international flavor to the property. An animated installation by Julian Opie, featuring two female portraits that move and blink, is visible only from inside

the spyglass-fitted elevator. Works by local artists—including Queen Sonja of Norway, whose otherworldly photographs hang in the library—round out the collection.

In the lounge of the two-story lobby, cognac-colored chairs by Flexform bring out the dusty Western landscape of an adjacent Richard Prince print, while dark blue sofas by B&B Italia provide a cool contrast. Wille Våge compares the hotel’s palette, meant to induce warmth, to a flame: “In the middle you have dark gray and blue, and then every-thing gets golden,” she says. Actual flames in the lounge’s fireplace bring this visual cue to bear. Nordgren adorned the hotel’s 119 guest rooms with graphic prints and photographs that complement Wille Våge’s scheme.

Restaurant and Bar

Fru K, the Thief’s second-floor restaurant, brings Norwegian ingredients and special-ties, including herring caviar and cured ham, into a cozy environ. To break up the space’s long, rectangular shape, Wille Våge filled it with mismatched furnishings: tall bar chairs, armchairs, and sofas crowd around rectangular and circular tables. “My ambition was to make every table feel like a special table,” she says. A dividing wall of transparent gold glass, with hooks to hang winter coats, “helps make the space more intimate,” Wille Våge adds.

On the roof, a terrace bar contrasts indoor furnishings—armchairs by B&B Italia and oversized lamps by Antonangeli—with pan-oramic views of the city and seascape. Though the hotel encourages its guests to look out on the city, it’s clear that the city looks back inside, too. “The hotel is definitely a representative part of the area,” Nordgren says. With its effer-vescent glow, the Thief captures an energy of the country not reflected in its climate.

BEN PUNDOLE’S TAKE ON THE THIEF:

“The Thief is a fantastic new addition to Oslo’s Tjuvholmen neighborhood, which has in recent years become a cultural hotbed of design, art, and architecture. The area is home to many culinary adventures, and offers several nightlife options to boot. It’s little wonder, then, that the hotel plays a pivotal role in the vibrant social fabric of the city. A hub for leisure and business travelers alike, the Thief boasts waterfront views, a buzzing bar, and a restaurant with locally sourced fare by chef Kari Innerå. Perhaps the most brilliant touch: the Astrup Fearnley Museum, located just a short walk away, lends the hotel an impressive collection of art. In my humble opinion, it’s one of the most intriguing hospitality ventures to pop onto the Scandinavian scene in years.”

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(TOP TO BOTTOM) The exterior of the Thief hotel. “The Horse Thief” (1999), a print by Richard Prince, next to chairs by Flexform in the lobby.

HOTEL

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SURFACE

A Manhattan eatery’s nostalgic maritime décor invites exploration.

BY ALLIE WEISS

In New York, nearly every 10 blocks brings a new neighborhood, each with its own nicknames, cultural preferences, and stereotypes. But 29-year-old Phil Winser, the self-taught designer who runs the popular New York establishments the Fat Radish and the Leadbelly with partner Ben Towill, doesn’t pay attention to neighborhood lines. Their new space, called the East Pole and co-owned with Anthony and Tom Martignetti of the bar Brinkley’s, is on the Upper East Side—a neighborhood that some consider a dead zone for innovative cuisine. “It doesn’t matter if I’m opening in Williamsburg, in SoHo, or uptown,” Winser says. “I always start with the space—the bones of the building I have to work with. We try to create spaces that could have a mix of people in them, not one specific type.”

Before it was remodeled for the East Pole, the space resembled a “white box,” according to Winser. He and Anthony Martignetti, his collaborator on the design, preserved this look by using simple materials: plaster, American walnut, and steel. Downstairs, a custom-made

industrial metal panel separates the front bar from the dining room. To maintain the lightness of the space, Winser and Martignetti covered the walls in plaster and built whitewashed ash tables and deep blue banquettes (with white buttons, to evoke a nautical theme). A skylight above a large, rounded booth helps illuminate the semi-exposed kitchen in the back.

Upstairs, the interiors allude to themes of exploration and travel, first in a space with dark green canvas banquettes—the canvas came from a tent that Winser and Martignetti purchased at an army-supply store—and a large copper-clad bar. The adjacent private dining room, decorated with bright historic maps from the Winser family’s collection, is the floor’s colorful centerpiece. “My father worked at the Royal Geographical Society in London as the director, and my mom worked with him,” Winser says.

“He collected maps and always had this idea of making a map room with them on display.” Winser’s father made a selection of original prints to surround the 25-person dining table.

Each element in the space—besides the chairs on the first floor—was custom-built by Winser and Martignetti’s team, with materials from around New York state. “We try to use the materials in a simple, natural way to create texture and patterns,” Winser says. The menu, dreamed up by chef Nicholas Wilber and sourced from regional purveyors, also presents a draw. “If you don’t enjoy the food,” Winser says, “the design becomes secondary.”

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The upstairs bar at the East Pole, with banquettes upholstered in green canvas from an army tent.

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Dish by Seamus Mullen

INSPIRED BY THE EAST POLE

I love the clean, slightly whimsical design. It feels kind of like a restaurant version of a Wes Anderson film. There are nods to a bygone nautical era, set against refurbished materials with hints of British stock. I could imagine a handsome couple snacking at the bar and sipping Pimm’s Cups beneath a lazy wicker fan, he in a gauzy linen suit brought up to date with a pair of Vans sneakers, and she looking like she’d just stepped out of a Graham Greene novel—save for her iPhone and the tattoo across her inner wrist.

I wanted to create a dish that evoked that nostal-gic, romanticized past and shared the same whimsy the design captures so well. It seemed appropri-ate that the dish feature seafood, given the naval décor at the East Pole—and what more appropriate English fish than mackerel? I visited London recently, and mackerel appears to be going through a bit of a renaissance lately. For too long it has been a divisive fish, making friends and enemies quickly. It can be sublime or it can be foul, depending upon freshness and execution. It’s not a very forgiving fish, but when handled properly, it’s a revelation.

Serves Four

1 medium-sized fillet of Boston mackerel, or 1 small-sized fillet of Spanish mackerel

1⁄2 cup kosher salt½1⁄2 cup sugar1 small shallot, finely minced1 clove garlic, grated on a Microplane6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil8 thin slices of sourdough Pullman bread, lightly

toasted≈ coarse sea salt

For the pickled tomatoes

1⁄2 cup cherry tomatoes 1⁄2 cup white wine vinegar1⁄2 cup water4 tablespoons sugar1 clove garlic, crushed2 sprigs thyme1 teaspoon black peppercorns1 teaspoon mustard seeds

For the horseradish crème fraîche

1⁄2 cup crème fraîche2 tablespoons grated fresh horseradish4 tablespoons freshly minced chives≈ zest and juice of 1 lemon≈ fresh ground pepper≈ pinch of kosher salt

Special equipment

4 four-ounce canning jars with flip-top lids≈ stovetop smoker or charcoal grill with a lid≈ oak or applewood chips≈ standing mixer or mortar and pestle

Rinse the mackerel fillets under cold running water and pat dry with a paper towel. Using fish tweezers, carefully remove any remaining pin bones. In a medium-sized Pyrex roasting pan, combine the salt and sugar, and lay the mackerel on top of the mixture, skin side down. Sprinkle the mixture over the flesh side of the fillets, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

At the same time, bring all the ingredients for the pickled tomatoes—except the tomatoes—to a boil in a medium saucepot. Add the tomatoes and set the whole pot aside in the refrigerator to cool. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the crème fraîche with horseradish, lemon zest and juice, fresh ground pepper, and kosher salt, and set aside in the refrigerator. After the fish has cured for 20 minutes, remove from the fridge and thoroughly rinse under cold running water until none of the salt-sugar mixture remains, then pat dry with paper towel and set aside. Prepare the smoker or grill over medium-low heat until the wood chips are smoldering and producing ample smoke. Place the fish, skin side down, on a wire rack in the smoker or on the grill and cover. Smoke for 15 to 20 minutes at medium-low temperature until fully cooked. Taste a small piece after 10 minutes to see if it’s smoked to your preference.

Once the fish is cooked through, remove from the smoker and set aside to cool. Using a small spoon, delicately flake the flesh away from the skin, discarding the skin and any small bones that you may have missed. Combine the smoked mackerel, diced shallot, grated garlic, and olive oil in a paddle-fitted mixer and gently paddle in short, five-second bursts. Lightly mix the fish; don’t whip it into a mousse. Add the olive oil and two tablespoons of softened butter, and pulse a few more times to incorporate. Divide the fish evenly into four jars and lightly press down to form an even surface at the top of the fish. Heat the remaining butter in a small pan over medium heat until the butter begins to separate. Skim off the solids and allow the clarified butter to cool for a few minutes, then pour one tablespoon of butter on top of each canning jar of smoked mackerel. Close the lids and set aside to cool in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Serve in the canning jars with a small bowl of pickled tomatoes and spread the horseradish créme fraîche on the toast. Add a dollop of smoked mackerel to each piece of toast. Enjoy!

Seamus Mullen is the chef and owner of the restaurant Tertulia in New York’s West Village.

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I surveyed some of our designers and talked about the idea of providing helmets at the Citi Bike docking stations. We came up with several principles that were clear. First, they need to fit heads of all shapes and sizes, so adjustability was critical. Second, they absolutely need to answer the question of hygiene, since they’re going to be shared. And third, we felt that they need to look cool enough to encourage riders to actually use them.

We looked at having the helmets sit alongside the Citi Bike program. We did a lot of exploration of an entirely disposable helmet. Foam and cardboard materials didn’t quite provide the necessary safety and durability after being stored before use, and with a purely inflatable helmet, not only could it be punctured, but it would make its users look kind of nerdy. To address these issues, we created a hybrid: a helmet shell using current technologies fitted with a custom inner liner.

For the shell, we explored the idea of a sleek, hard sheet of Lexan or fiberglass. It would be a great-looking object with a gel strap and an adjustable, reusable, recyclable liner. The helmet would be rented the same way a bike is: You insert your key card and a helmet shell is unlocked. The inflatable liner, which users can inflate to the desired pressure, would be dispensed, like a tissue, next to the helmet dispenser.

One of the things that’s sort of hypnotic about the Citi Bikes, I think, is the flashing lights. As an added element that would be pure joy, we thought, Let’s get a headband that riders can wrap around the helmet and customize with their own messages.

A H

ead

Star

t

In New York City, the Citi Bike is widespread. Helmets aren’t. But with this simple scheme, they could be.

In this column, the architecture and design firm Rockwell Group suggests a design solution for something that doesn’t yet exist in the world but should.

BY DAVID ROCKWELL

PROPOSAL

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Crui

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ontr

ol“Land yacht” is not a compliment. The vinyl-roofed, prodigiously thirsty, indifferently styled Leviathans that gave rise to the term in the 1970s reflected the worst tendencies of American carmakers. It is not a design idiom crying out for revival. What, then, makes the Cadillac Elmiraj concept, a 17-foot-long, V8-powered, rear-wheel-drive coupe, seem so novel?

In a word, swagger.“There is a measure of confidence in our

design that maybe we didn’t have a decade ago,” says Niki Smart, lead exterior designer for Cadillac, who works out of the brand’s design studios in Los Angeles. “I’ve heard some people call it ‘swagger.’”

The 40-year-old Smart joined Cadillac in 2000, a year after General Motors’s luxury division introduced its so-called Art & Sci-ence approach, marked by strong geom-etry and razor-sharp creases. But a peculiar thing happened in the past year, initially with the 2013 ATS compact sedan, then with the 2014 CTS midsize sedan, and now with the Elmiraj concept: Cadillac allowed some softness to temper the rectilinear dik-tats of Art & Science. “When we started, you saw some naïveté coming through in the blending of those two elements,” Smart says of Art & Science’s origins. “Now you see a lot more fluidity, a lot more grace, a lot more maturity.”

Haunches flare at the rear of the Elmiraj (the name references a dry lake bed in South-ern California popular with midcentury hot-rodders), with red vertical taillights mirroring white LED headlight arrays. The length of the roof appears to float, an ef-fect achieved by omitting the B-pillar that

would typically run between the front and rear seats. Chrome trim extends in a V-formation from the grille toward the out-board mirrors, bypassing sinister vent slits alongside the hood. Heightening this sense of menace is the glazed-chrome grille’s saw-tooth pattern.

For all the exterior’s drama, more daring stylistic ground is covered in the cabin. The dash is split over two levels, with the upper portion echoing the chevron-like chin of the grille. Layers of instrumentation nest

“like Russian dolls,” according to interior-design lead Gael Buzyn, in stark contrast to Cadillac’s current designs, which follow a conventional “center stack” layout. Asked about the split-level dash’s prospects for appearing in future models, Buzyn demurs.

“It’s ultimately not my choice,” he says, “but it is my vision.”

The Elmiraj, in both name and stature, evokes a golden era of American automotive design without veering into a retro-futurist rut. A contemporary Don Draper would create a killer campaign around it—so strongly does 1960s America resonate. It’s an inheritance that Smart, a Briton, and Buzyn, a Frenchman, are happy to embrace.

“For us, the ’60s was American design at its greatest,” Smart says. “In the ’50s, it was a bit too kitsch; people were borrowing so heavily from aviation. But in the ’60s came a simplicity that was remarkable. Design-ers said, ‘Hey, it doesn’t have to be over-embellished.’” Such thinking suggests that Cadillac’s newfound sense of confidence is, indeed, no mirage.

Cadillac skillfully gives a boat-like behemoth from past decades a smoother, more streamlined face.

BY JONATHAN SCHULTZ

TRANSPORT

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Man

Twenty years ago, when Adam Kamens started at Amuneal, the magnetic-shielding business his parents founded in 1965, he faced a classic management conundrum: how to diversify and innovate in the face of sweeping technological changes. “I spent the next six years as a sales engineer selling to universities, government research labs, medical consultation companies,” he says, “and I realized after all that time—we’d stabilized, then dropped off, then stabilized again—that we couldn’t grow the business. I said, ‘We’ve got to do something else, or we won’t be here.’”

That something else turned out to be making custom retail, hospitality, and residential pieces for architects and designers. Magnetic shielding and furniture may not have much in common—aesthetically, at least—but Kamens, a trained glass blower, saw enormous opportunity in entering the interior-design trade. “The way we handle everything from an engineering standpoint is exactly the same,” says Kamens, 43, who took over as CEO of Amuneal in 2007. “Whether we’re doing shielding for Los Alamos National Lab or something for

Coach, we have modeling software we use and build everything exactly the same way.” In recent years, Amuneal’s jobs have included fabricating the bronze doors and tables for the Boom Boom Room at New York’s Standard hotel and the 30-foot-long stainless-steel bar for the Wright restaurant at the Guggenheim Museum (Roman and Williams designed the former, Andre Kikoski the latter). In September, Amuneal finished what Kamens calls “probably the most impressive project we’ve done”: a 2,500-square-foot ceiling and 40-foot-diameter column for the Reunion Tower in Dallas, designed by Gensler.

Kamens’s next move brings Amuneal’s tal-ents to the masses with the launch of American Street Showroom, a soaring 11,000-square-foot collaborative retail space. Located in the city’s Kensington neighborhood in a former Philadelphia Electric Company substation built in 1921, it was opened in October by Kamens, with help from Brian Foster and Ernie Sesskin of furniture maker Groundwork and designer Robert True Ogden. “The goal is: Everything we have should be for sale,”

Kamens says, adding, “Even the light fixtures we’re doing on the exterior of the building—you could buy those.”

The stories of Amuneal and American Street Showroom in many ways reflect Philadelphia itself—a city that is on the cusp of creative resurgence, or, as Kamens puts it, “ripe.” (Another major player in the city’s active design-build movement is the furniture label BDDW, run by Tyler Hays.) “There’s so much [real estate] available,” Kamens says of the city, “and it’s reasonably priced. You can buy something and not know what you’re going to do with it.” That free-thinking spirit, combined with a “really vibrant manufacturing base”—plus the city’s role as a major distribution hub for the Eastern seaboard—leaves it poised to become a haven for architects, artists, and designers.

“There’s a sense of soul to what we’re doing,” Kamens says of Amuneal’s pieces—perhaps also alluding to what’s happening culturally in Philadelphia. “It should feel like you’ve seen it before. It should trigger an emotional connection.”

Adam Kamens puts the manufacturing spirit of Philadelphia to good use.

BY SPENCER BAILEY

PHOTOS BY CHRIS SEMBROT

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01 The 19th-century collections found inside the three-story Wagner Free Institute of Science pique Kamens’s curiosity. “You become a 6-year-old kid,” he says of visiting the space. “You’re seeing animals that are extinct and that you can’t believe existed. You’re seeing things that look like they’re from another planet.” 1700 West Montgomery Avenue; 215-763-6529; wagnerfreeinstitute.org

02 Kamens’s favorite new restaurant in town is Serpico, recently opened by chef Peter Serpico (the former culinary director of David Chang’s Momofuku group) and restaurateur Stephen Starr. Its interior, by designer Thomas Schlesser, includes an 18-seat chef’s table and is decidedly different from the space’s previous tenant: Foot Locker. And though its location is on South Street—“where there probably hasn’t been a new restaurant in eight years,” Kamens says—the restaurant has become a hot spot for its refined menu: deep-fried duck leg, caper-brined trout, lamb ribs. 604 South Street; 215-925-3001; serpicoonsouth.com

03 “We’re an old city, so we have tons of parks,” Kamens says, “and all of the parks look sort of the same.” Not so with the Race Street Pier, located in the shadow of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Though Kamens admits “you can’t compare it to the High Line,” he adds, “It’s a fantastic reclaiming of previously use-less space.” Designed by New York–based firm James Corner Field Operations, the park opened two years ago. North Columbus Boulevard; 215-629-3200; dela-wareriverwaterfrontcorp.com

04 Kamens enjoys the city’s Rodin Museum, home to one of the largest collections of Auguste Rodin’s works outside of Paris, among them “The Thinker” (1882). “It’s not intimidating,” he says of the museum’s Beaux-Arts building, designed by French architect Paul Cret (Jacques Gréber did the landscape design). “It’s grand in what it houses, but it’s humble when you approach it.” Last year, the space reopened following a three-year, $9 million renovation. 2154 Benjamin Franklin Parkway; 215-763-8100; rodinmuseum.org

THE INSIDER’S GUIDE TO PHILADELPHIA BY ADAM KAMENS

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Like a lot of teenagers in the ’80s, the artist Aaron Curry got his first dose of art from album covers. “I would trace album covers, and then try to draw them,” he recalls of his youth in San Antonio, Texas. “I didn’t grow up around art at all, but later, when I was in high school, I discovered Salvador Dalí and Picasso.” While not typically compared to Dalí or Picasso, Curry’s brightly colored biomorphic sculptures, disorienting wall-paper, and three-dimensional paintings are often described as contemporary kin to the work of Jean Dubuffet and mobile master Alexander Calder. He was a protégé of ’90s “Helter Skelter” artists Mike Kelley and Liz Larner, and his pieces owe plenty to their influence, too.

It was Curry’s physicality that inspired a new storefront project at the Dior Homme flagship store in L.A., where he’s based. “I decided to enclose the space, which I think almost makes it a bit more traditional as far as a window display,” says Curry, 41. “But it also demarcated my sculptural space. I made

this box, which creates a window display, and the sculpture goes up 17 or 18 feet, penetrating the ceiling of the box, breaking into the space of the store.” To come up with the towering sculpture’s black-and-white pattern, Curry took photos of his skin and hair to create what he calls a “skin environment.” “It’s like a giant nude,” he says, “but I created it out of weird photos of abstract parts of my own body.”

The installation differs from his works at New York’s Lincoln Center, on view through January. There, Curry erected 14 aluminum sculptures ranging from 4 to 19 feet in height, all in his signature, bright-colored car paint. Like his Dior work, the installation is based on the human figure. However, “it’s not necessarily like, ‘Oh, this piece is a figure,’” he says. “It could just be like an arm that fell off another [sculpture].” As if bicoastal exhibitions weren’t enough, Curry also has a show on view at Paris gallery Almine Rech (through Nov. 9), for which he took the “skin pattern from the

Dior [display] and elaborated on it,” he says, this time in vivid colors.

To create such monumental sculptures, Curry employs assistants in his two L.A. studios—one devoted to screen printing, the other to wood. He also works from a home studio in Beachwood Canyon, where he makes most of his preliminary drawings. At home, he finds inspiration in a common indulgence: television. “When my wife first met me, she couldn’t believe I had the TV on all the time,” he says. “I was really into MTV as a kid. It was like an escape, somehow.”

Self,

Em

ploy

ed

L.A.-based artist Aaron Curry uses the human body as the inspiration for larger-than-life sculptures.

BY MARINA CASHDAN

PORTRAIT BY MIKE ROSENTHAL

The artist Aaron Curry in front of a sculpture he made for the Dior Homme flagship on Rodeo Drive in L.A.

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In this column, we ask Material Connexion vice president Andrew Dent, Ph.D., to select one innovation set to influence what design-ers will be using tomorrow.

BY CAROLYN STANLEY

PHOTO BY TOM HAYES

Concrete is ubiquitous in architecture and interiors—worldwide, its usage exceeds that of wood, plastics, or any other man-made material—and for good reason: it’s inexpensive, durable, and increasingly produced with environmentally friendly methods. In terms of aesthetics, however, it’s often considered cold or industrial. Tactility Factory, headquartered in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has found a way for concrete to shed its spartan reputation by combining it with a material on the opposite end of the spectrum: textiles.

Co-founders Trish Belford and Ruth Morrow first began exploring concrete-textile hybrids seven years ago, having arrived at the collaboration through very different avenues: Belford is a textile designer who ran her own

printing company and worked in high-end fashion; Morrow is an architect and a pro-fessor of architecture at Queens University Belfast who has practiced in the U.K., Ireland, and Germany.

“Ruth wished to maintain tactility by making hard surfaces soft as opposed to the normally conceived harsh urban environment of con-crete,” Belford says. “[I wanted] to extend the technologies and understanding of tex-tiles beyond just the soft comfort of a scarf or interior fabric. We wanted to use textile both as an aesthetic and acoustic enhancement to concrete.” By drawing from their respective disciplines, the partners created an original material, Linen Concrete, a decorative wall panel for interiors that merges the look and feel of molded concrete with an inlaid linen pattern.

The primary components of the panel are glass-reinforced concrete and a 100-percent linen fabric. Flax fiber was chosen in the latter application for two reasons: its historical sig-nificance as a longtime product of Northern Ireland, and, as Belford and Morrow deduced after extensive testing, its ability to withstand concrete’s alkalinity. The linen is laser-cut into a custom pattern or one of 11 house designs,

and while the company won’t reveal its exact methods, the embedding process relies on specially designed composite textiles—parts of which disappear beneath the surface of the concrete and some of which remain visible. At the end of the process, the exposed fabric is sealed with a stain-resistant finish made from organic solvents. Once the concrete has hardened, the wall panels are rigid, reason-ably lightweight (approximately 5 pounds per square foot, at 10 to 15 millimeters thick) and available in various sizes.

The result is a visually striking, dual-textured surface that adds detail to interior environments such as restaurants, hotels, and residences, with the added bonus of improving acoustics. As Belford explains it, Linen Concrete’s forte lies in its ability to balance the properties of its two major components. “The concrete creates as much of the pattern as the textiles, and ultimately both work in harmony to create one surface,” she says.

SURFACE 66

Seats for SeaBefore prominent Italian architect and designer Giò Ponti created some of his best-known structures, including the Pirelli Tower in Milan and the Denver Art Museum’s North Building, he spent five years designing cruise ships. “It’s a hidden face of his work,” says Cédric Morisset, the head of the contemporary design depart-ment at Piasa auction house in France. One of those ships, the Augustus, launched in 1952 and sailed for three decades before it was sold and reimagined as a floating restaurant in Manila, the Philippines.

In October, Piasa sold two pairs of armchairs designed by Ponti in 1950 for the ship’s first-class ballroom—one for about $54,500, the other for roughly $61,200. “They’re a bit heavier [than Ponti’s other work],” Morisset says. “You can see the lines that will later give birth to the Superleggera, his very light chairs for Cassina. But at that time, his style was more awkward.” Upholstered in velvet, the chairs—also manufactured by Cassina—were envisioned as a luxurious addition to the ballroom, a space fit for the ship’s wealthiest travelers.

In the ’50s and ’60s, it was common for designers to work in a wide range of medi-ums—cruise ships included, according to

Morisset. “It was a golden age for ships,” he says. “Crossing the Atlantic was very popular. Boats were considered one of the flagships of luxury and identity in Italy. Since Ponti was one of the major architects and designers of his time, it was quite normal that the ship companies would hire him.”

Now only a few of the chairs, which are rare examples of Ponti’s early work, remain. Though the original velvet upholstery has been removed—Piasa sold the chairs in a neutral fabric, expecting the new owner to reuphol-ster them—they preserve a now-lost moment in maritime history: The aging Augustus was dismantled in India three years ago.

Four cruise-ship chairs by design legend Giò Ponti find buyers at Parisian house Piasa.

BY ALLIE WEISS

PHOTO

: COURTESY PIASA.

AUCTION

67

Transcend (Hatje Cantz) is the first monograph from the London-born artist Terry Haggerty, who brings minimalist simplicity to his mind-bending stripe paintings. Op Art has seen a resurgence in the past decade; viewers’ fascination with manually made, perception-defying 2-D images has only grown with the rise of digital renderings and computer-aided design. With his precise hand, Haggerty cre-ates flat planes that seem to wobble and bend, canvases that owe as much to architecture as they do to midcentury abstractionists like Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly.

The authors of Art Cities of the Future (Phaidon) would like readers to forget about New York, London, and Paris and consider

12 other cities—among them Beirut, Lagos, Seoul, and San Juan—as global hubs for art. For each city in this ambitious volume, a curator has chosen eight artists to represent the area’s burgeoning avant-garde. Many of those selected have a decidedly political bent to their work, reflecting the expanding role of art in social discourse around the world.

Louis Vuitton City Bags: A Natural History (Rizzoli) examines the century-long develop-ment and manufacture of the iconic lines that helped make the handbag a fashion staple for modern women. Taking cues from scientific taxonomy diagrams, the authors and illus-trators of this handsome volume, bound in buckram canvas with a swirl-paint print, trace

the rich genealogies of Louis Vuitton staples such as the Speedy, Papillon, and Alma, as well as collaborative “mutations” like Yayoi Kusama’s polka-dotted Monogram series.

When NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter left Earth for the Red Planet in 2005, it was equipped with the HiRISE, or High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, which at the time was the most powerful camera ever sent to space. This is Mars (Aperture) offers a selection of the HiRISE’s black-and-white photographs, revealing the planet’s craters, dunes, and crests in breathtaking detail. The book’s stunning and often puzzlingly abstract photos of Mars’s surface will appeal to any-one who’s visually curious.

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68SURFACE

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Spec

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orce

s Developed to withstand magnetic fields, the scientist’s watch is now a collector’s item. In this column, Benjamin Clymer, founder and executive editor of the website Hodinkee, and Stephen J. Pulvirent, associate editor of Hodinkee, unveil the intricacies and trends of the world of fine watchmaking.

BY STEPHEN J. PULVIRENT

Before digital technologies and GPS came along, a watch was a necessary tool for travel-ers and explorers alike. For pilots, divers, and adventurers, knowing the time is essential information. But not all exploration occurs on a mountain or in an airplane. Some is done in the laboratory. As experimentation flourished in the middle of the 20th century, the labora-tory researcher began to capture the interest of watchmakers, and an entirely new type of timepiece was born: the scientist’s watch.

In the 1950s and ’60s, a good watch was serious lab equipment, and a mechanical timepiece was the only option, as there were no digital alternatives. The defining feature of the scientist’s watch was its ability to withstand the strong magnetic fields encountered in

laboratory settings, something that can wreak havoc on a mechanical movement. The core of that movement is the balance, which is the combination of spring and wheel that pulses back and forth a few times every second to keep time. Under magnetic duress, the spring can become distorted and the wheel unbalanced, undermining the watch’s ability to keep time accurately.

Back in 1836, the English scientist Michael Faraday invented a cage to protect larger instru-ments from just this problem. A Faraday cage is essentially a protective layer made from con-ductive material that absorbs electromagnetic interference, keeping the electric field from affecting the cage’s contents. Today, protecting the movement with a soft iron Faraday cage is the most common way to make a wristwatch anti-magnetic.

This form of anti-magnetic shield first became popular in pilot’s watches during World War II to protect against interference from the plane itself and later was built into scientific watches, most famously the Rolex Milgauss. Named for its resistance to magnetic fields up to 1,000 gauss strong, the Milgauss was adopted by many of the scientists work-ing in Switzerland’s CERN laboratory, where some of the most powerful electromagnetic fields in the world were being generated.

The first Milgauss (reference 6541) was released in 1956 and carried over many of the familiar features from the Rolex sport watches of the day, such as the graduated

The Luxe edition of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s anti-magnetic 1958 Geophysic chronometer. PH

OTO

: CO

URT

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LEX. 6541, COURTESY CH

RISTIE’S.

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rotating bezel, the Oyster bracelet, and the absence of crown guards. It also featured a honeycomb-textured dial and a distinctive, lightning bolt–shaped seconds hand that has since then become synonymous with the Milgauss.

In the 1960s, the brand replaced the 6541 with reference 1019, doing away with the black rotating bezel in favor of a smooth metal bezel and swapping the luminous hour markers for metal batons. The 1019 remained in produc-tion through the 1980s, when the Milgauss line was discontinued. The model would remain dormant until 2007, when Rolex combined the straight hour markers and flat bezel of the 1019 with the lightning bolt hand of the 6541 to create the reference 116400 Milgauss. The special-edition model added a green-tinted crystal to the mix and has become a much sought-after Rolex. “The fact that the Milgauss was made for such a specific purpose and for such a small target audience speaks volumes to Rolex’s dedication to making true tool watches and not just wrist candy,” says vintage Rolex expert and collector Eric Ku. “The 6541, or ‘lightning hand,’ and the 1019 have always fas-cinated collectors with their relative scarcity, as their purpose-driven design made them relatively rare watches from the beginning.”

The watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre also created its own anti-magnetic watch in 1958 with a model named the Geophysic. The global scientific community had declared 1957–1958 the International Geophysical Year, dedicat-ing that period to cutting-edge experiments in geology, physics, and other earth sciences. The Geophysic was anti-magnetic to 600 gauss, and a Geophysic was given to the commander of the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, after its trip under the North Pole in 1958. These chronometers had the unusual quirk of having their luminous markers placed on the inner bezel rather than the dial. They now have a dedicated cult following.

The IWC Ingenieur was first introduced in 1955, a year before the Milgauss. The earliest Ingenieurs were also used in scientific settings and had simple three-hand dial layouts. But it is the Ingenieurs of the 1970s that are best remembered by today’s collectors. The Ingenieur SL was released in 1976 after a

redesign by Gerald Genta, the mastermind behind the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Patek Philippe Nautilus. This repackaging took the Ingenieur away from its scientific roots and into the realm of luxury sport watches, even though the SL retained the old model’s anti-magnetic properties.

Innovation in anti-magnetic watches has continued. In January, Omega debuted the Seamaster Aqua Terra 15,000 Gauss. It uses only nonferrous materials in the coaxial cali-ber 8508 movement, eliminating the need for a Faraday cage altogether while remaining resis-tant up to 1.5 tesla (15,000 gauss). “It was an enormous challenge to identify just the right anti-ferromagnetic materials and then to deter-mine which components would be produced from those materials,” says Omega president Stephen Urquhart. “We have argued, though, that the number and ubiquity of magnets in our everyday lives increases steadily and the coaxial caliber 8508 will resist anything our customers are likely to encounter.”

BENJAMIN CLYMER ON PATEK PHILIPPE’S ANTI-MAGNETIC REFERENCE 3417:

There are several routes one may take as a watch col-lector, but all will invariably lead to vintage Patek Philippe. While Patek is best known for the elegant complications famously worn by the world’s elite, the brand has also participated in the true purpose-built category like Rolex, Omega, and IWC, companies that mostly produce tool watches. The reference 3417 is an anomaly of sorts for Patek. This anti-magnetic timepiece resembles a simple dress watch, of which Patek has made thousands in precious metals, but this one is cased in stainless steel. Further, it features large cursive script on the dial that reads “Amagnetic,” an indication found on few other Patek Philippes. The watch itself was launched with an

existing, manually wound caliber 12-400 in 1958, but by 1960, Patek had conceived what many believe to be the greatest movement ever made, the 27AM-400. This manually wound movement was shielded from electro-magnetic influence, due to an intermediary steel case back and an escapement made of nonmagnetic materi-als. Because of this, the reference 3417, with a stainless steel case more desirable and valuable than a Patek in a precious metal, and an elegant and innovative 27AM-400 caliber, is one of the most interesting and sought-after watches to astute collectors today: It’s an example of Patek’s rare forays into the purpose-built tool watch category. Recent sales at auction have brought between $35,000 and $60,000, the amount varying depending on the model’s condition—a small price to pay for the crown jewel of scientist’s watches.

Rolex references 116400 (left) and 6541 from the brand’s Milgauss line.

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Bernardaud, the French manufacturer whose name is synonymous with fine Limoges porcelain, honored its 150th anniversary this year, not by touting its illustrious history but by reaffirming its modern vision. The brand selected 13 leading contemporary artists, filmmakers, and photographers to design a special collection of dinnerware, unveiling the results in January at the French design fair Maison et Objet, before rolling out the pieces at new stores in Manhattan and Paris this summer. Additional items were released in the U.S. in October. “What better way to

look forward,” chairman Michel Bernardaud says, “than through the eyes of today’s visual artists, who have their finger on the pulse of contemporary culture.”

Some of those commissioned, such as street artist JR (with Prune Nourry) and filmmaker David Lynch, are surprising choices whose signature styles are transformed by the porcelain medium. Others, like Jeff Koons, have worked with the material before. Koons emblazoned the likenesses of some of his porcelain “Banality” sculptures, including the notorious “Michael Jackson and Bubbles”

(1988), on Bernardaud cups. Of all the visionary creators, perhaps the artist most famously linked to dinnerware—or plates, anyway—is Julian Schnabel, who has painted for decades on surfaces covered with smashed dishes. His range of (unbroken) plates and cups for Bernardaud’s anniversary collection, titled

“Ogni angelo ha il suo lato spaventoso,” or “Every Angel Has Its Terrifying Side,” features hazy images of what appears to be a Mughal-era fort in India. The series prompts viewers to dream of distant places, Schnabel says, adding,

“It could also make your food look better.”

In celebration of its 150th anniversary, the French house Bernardaud asked 13 artists to make their marks on its porcelain.

BY DAVE KIM

Dinner Flair

(TOP TO BOTTOM) A teacup from Julian Schnabel’s “Ogni angelo ha il suo lato spaventoso” series for Bernardaud. An after-dinner cup by Jeff Koons featuring his “Michael Jackson and Bubbles” sculpture.

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Light Minded

01 Philippe Starck’s Biblioteque Nationale floor lamp for Flos has built-in bookshelves, perfect for those who don’t want to stray far from the couch for reading material. Made of chrome-plated die-cast zinc, the stand incor-porates a USB port to recharge e-devices.

02 Evoking the electron orbits of an atom, the ribbons of Estiluz’s Siso, by Estudi Ribaudi, are crafted from plated or painted aluminum and seem to float around the spherical dif-fuser. The wall sconce, table lamp, and floor lamp versions come in chrome and white.

03 Artemide’s Alcatraz lamp juxtaposes the simplicity of its stand with the kinetic curve of its thermoplastic diffuser. Designed by Giuseppe Maurizio Scutellà, the LED lamp array has two dimmers that allow for adjust-ment of direct and indirect light.

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With influences spanning ceramics, terrariums, and jeans, these lamps reveal their inner brilliance.

BY JEREMY LEHRER

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04 To design his Container By lamp for Ligne Roset, British designer Benjamin Hubert took inspiration from earthenware. The light con-sists of two ceramic pieces joined together by a silicone band; a steel weight in the base stabilizes the fixture.

05 Jaime Hayon’s latest creation for Baccarat, the Baby Candy Light lamp features a faceted lead crystal lampshade, resulting in a visually arresting object. The ceramic base comes in black or white. A larger version of the table lamp, also shown, was introduced in 2011.

06 Aiming at a younger consumer, the fashion brand Diesel takes its attitude from jeans to interiors with Foscarini’s Soft Power lamp. Details are drawn from the denim world: The shade and base are made of printed cotton fabric and feature a double-stitched seam.

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07Marset’s Nenúfar features an array of one, two, or three circular polycarbonate discs angled at 120 degrees from each other, providing separate showers of LED light. The set, which takes its name from a water lily, can be used in multiple clusters.

08Santa & Cole enlisted the studio Raw Color to expand the palette for its lampshades; the terracotta, mustard, and green options, each blending together three separate yarns, can be used for any of the brand’s ribbon-shade lamps.

09The Monocle bedside sconce, designed by Brooklyn-based Rich Brilliant Willing, refer-ences nautical lights. Its machined aluminum casing, in black or champagne, can be swiv-eled to provide direct or indirect light from the dimmable LED.

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10Canadian designer Matthew Cleland, who designs terrariums through his company Score + Solder, recently introduced a new series of handcrafted glass lamps. The debut of the line includes two crystallike shapes, each with three color options.

11Sonneman’s Level light contrasts opacity and transparency while celebrating minimal-ism: The lanternlike glass base reveals the electric cord, which is covered with red silk. The light’s paper lampshade comes in black or white.

12Reminiscent of a DIY mobile, Arik Levy’s Rhythm chandelier, created for Vibia, has LED elements that can be rotated up to 90 degrees around a central axis. The resulting arrangement of the resin body can be locked into place.

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When digital entrepreneur Soraya Darabi co-founded Zady, a new online marketplace for socially conscious fashion, she found that the endeavor had an influence on her own sensibility. Like an epicure who reduces meat consumption after visiting a slaughterhouse, Darabi cut down on fast fashion for a more minimal and sustainable wardrobe, a conversion she calls becoming a “clothetarian.” “I have empty hangers for the first time in my life,” she says.

Darabi and partner Maxine Bédat launched the website in August, after a decade of intermittent contact and reading articles that mutual friends posted on social media about their respective careers. The two have known each other since attending high school together in Minneapolis, and in March of last year, Bédat enlisted Darabi, co-founder of the restaurant guide app Foodspotting, to help her with digital-media strategy for her nonprofit venture the Bootstrap Project. The website is an accessories and home furnishings bazaar that connects global artisans with Western buyers. “As we learned more and more about the producers, we felt connected to the Bootstrap Project products we owned,” Bédat says. “Then it turned from, ‘Well, we feel great about these specific products, but what is happening with the rest of our wardrobes?’ Generationally, we’re all now looking into where our food products are coming from, yet there’s this big question mark with our clothes.”

This is the question that Zady aims to resolve; the company’s name means grandfather in Yiddish and prosperous in Arabic, definitions that translate to values of “heritage

craftsmanship” and promoting prosperity for the artisans. Products on the site are tagged with Zady’s assessment criteria: “Made in the USA,”

“High Quality Raw Materials,” “Handmade,” “Locally Sourced,” and “Environmentally Conscious.” Each product page features a brand biography, images of workshops and artisans, and even the team’s favorite photos from a designer’s Instagram feed. Every item on the site is handpicked by Bédat and Darabi.

Vetting products begins at the trade shows. “You walk down miles and miles of apparel, and you see what a future dumpster is going to look like,” Bédat says. “But when a brand really knows its supply chain, is close to it, and knows about quality, the aesthetic tends to match, and you see that the products are beautiful as well.”

Zady favors small, longstanding, locally owned and operated producers, and its selections tend to have a clean and casual look. The offerings include men’s and women’s fashion as well as housewares: a slouchy Clare Vivier messenger bag, crisp denim clothes from Nashville brand Imogene + Willie, delicate decorative porcelain by Portland-based Pigeon Toe Ceramics. A bronze cuff designed by jewelry artist Winifred Grace is made in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in a workshop where women from impoverished backgrounds are taught to make the pieces.

Since the company’s launch, Darabi and Bédat have faced a deluge of suggestions along the lines of “You must look at this brand!” Collecting and showcasing these tips, as well as expanding Zady’s offerings, is the site’s next step. “We want to harness our community,” Darabi says. “We love that game of telephone.”

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Online retailer Zady seeks to bring environmental and social responsibility to the fashion world.

In this column, Surface editors put our stamp of approval on a game changer who’s influencing how we think about design.

BY JULIA COOKE

PORTRAIT BY GRANT CORNETT

Zady co-founders Soraya Darabi (left) and Maxine Bédat at Bédat’s apart-ment in New York.

ENDORSEMENT

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY SARAH SILVER STYLING BY JUSTIN MIN

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Shirt, Louis Vuitton. Skirt, Kenzo. Previous spread: Jacket, Levi’s.

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Coat, Valentino. Jeans, Levi’s.

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Fur coat and sweater, Fendi. Jeans, Hudson. Shoes, Christian Louboutin. Cuffs, Pierre Hardy. Opposite: Shirt, Acne. Jeans, Koral. Boots, 3.1 Phillip Lim.

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Jacket, coat, and shirt, Issey Miyake. Jeans, Vivienne Westwood for Lee. Shoes, Prada.

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Reptile jacket, Kenzo. Shirt, Current/Elliott. Jeans, Claudie Pierlot. Shoes, Christian Louboutin.

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Coat and shoes, Louis Vuitton. Shirt and jeans, Adriano Goldschmied. Opposite: Jacket and overalls, G-Star Raw. Jeans, Nili Lotan. Shoes, Nicholas Kirkwood.

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Jacket and skirt, Diesel Black Gold. Sweater, Fendi.

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Sweater, Tom Ford. Skirt, Viktor & Rolf. Embossed jeans, Current/Elliott.

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Sweater and jacket, Emporio Armani.

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Sweater, Lanvin. Jogging pants, Hudson.

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Fur coat, Emilio Pucci. Jeans, RtA. Harness and cuffs, Versace. Makeup: Walter Obal at Atelier Management for Make Up For Ever. Hair: Danielle Priano at Tim Howard Management. Manicurist: Candice Idehen. Producer: Jordana Abisdris. Photo assistants: Aaron Muntz and Isaac Bearman. Digital tech: Frank

Thompson. Fashion assistants: John Soper and Suna Sim. Retouching: Stella Digital. Lighting: Broncolor. Model: Alyona at Supreme.

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Dress, Viktor & Rolf. Jeans, J Brand. Mesh chaps, Kaimin. Shoes, Fendi.

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Lamb leather dress, Jil Sander.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SARAH SILVER STYLING BY JUSTIN MIN

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Suit, vest, and shirt, Umit Benan. Shoes, Giorgio Armani. Opposite: Jacket and sweater, Dior Homme. Pants and shoes, Prada. Previous spread: Coat and shirt, Giorgio Armani.

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Jacket, shirt, and pants, Bottega Veneta. Opposite: Sweater, Salvatore Ferragamo.

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Coat and pants, Tom Ford. Opposite: Coat, robe, and shirt, Dries Van Noten.

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Jacket, shirt, and pants, Burberry Prorsum. Opposite: Leather coat, wool coat, vest, shirt, pants, and shoes, Louis Vuitton.

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Coat, suit, and shirt, Marni. Shoes, Dries Van Noten. Opposite: Coat, Calvin Klein.

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Makeup: Walter Obal at Atelier Management for M.A.C. Hair: Danielle Priano at Tim Howard Management. Producer: Jordana Abisdris. Photo assistants: Aaron Muntz and Jeff Cate. Digital tech: Frank Thompson.

Retouching: Stella Digital. Lighting: Broncolor. Location: Neuehouse. Model: Dmitry at DNA.

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Nearly everything about the artist Julian Schnabel comes across as king size: his life-style, his Manhattan palazzo, his filmmaking prowess, his paintings. A more apt word may be “bold.” A risk-taker whose ambition knows no bounds, Schnabel has made a living using paint—or what-ever medium he touches—in unexpected, often enlightening ways. The polymath cannot be pinned down.

Though Schnabel, 62, is now widely known for directing the films Before Night Falls (2000) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), he initially gained attention as a painter. In 1976, he had his first show at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. Three years later, two solo exhibi-tions at New York’s Mary Boone Gallery—the debuts of his wax and plate paint-ings—followed. Throughout the ’80s, his work wasn’t just the talk of the town; alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat, another Boone prodigy, he practically became the nexus of the New

York art world. By 1987, when the Whitney Museum hosted the retrospective “Julian Schnabel: Paintings 1975–1986,” he was, in many circles, a household name.

In the decades since, Schnabel has expanded his artistic prac-tice, flourishing as a filmmaker, a furniture designer, and an architect (who designed his own 50,000-square-foot home in New York’s West Village). He even made a foray into music and released a rock album with Island Records in 1995. All the while, he has remained a prolific painter, with works exhibited around the world: France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Canada, Denmark. Major U.S. galler-ies like Pace and Gagosian have shown his paintings, too, and eight of his works were displayed in the lobby of the MetLife Building in 2006. Even so, Schnabel hasn’t had a comprehensive museum show in the U.S. since the Whitney retrospective. The industrialist Peter Brant—whose collection of contemporary art is among

the most notable in America—plans to remedy that this November, when the museum of the Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Connecticut, pres-ents roughly 50 of Schnabel’s works (through March 2014).

Earlier this fall, Surface caught up with Brant and Schnabel, the former at his manicured Greenwich estate, the latter in an unkempt garden behind the Paris home of his friend, the fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa. The collector and artist could not have been more different—Brant in a tan tailored suit, Schnabel in faded flannel and blue jeans—but both had one thing in common: a deep, unquestionable admiration for the other.

Art collector Peter Brant reveals his trove of Julian Schnabel’s works with a long-overdue exhibition.

INTERVIEWS BY SPENCER BAILEY

PORTRAIT BY ADRIAN GAUT

(OPPOSITE) Peter Brant at the upstairs gallery of the Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Connecticut.

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When did you meet Julian?

Around ’87. I was buying some of his paint-ings. I had admired Julian’s work for some time, then I had an opportunity to acquire a great velvet painting called “Ethnic Types.” Shortly after I bought that painting, I met him.

What about the painting made you buy it?

I thought it was very figurative. He brought this figurative element back to minimal art.

What interests you about Julian’s work?

I think he’s one of the great artists of the ’80s. The ’80s were a very powerful period in New York. Julian, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Prince, Christopher Wool, David Salle, Cindy Sherman, Robert Gober, Sherrie Levine—it’s a line of very, very important artists. I thought that at a point in the ’80s, maybe all the artists were mea-sured against Julian, because Julian was sort of the wunderkind.

I think conceptually he was coming from a more figurative-painting perspective, but Julian is really, at heart, an abstractionist. He’s a wonderful painter, one of the best. The Duchamp concept of the found image is very present in Julian’s work. He’s modern in many ways: his use of language, his use of materials. He’s naturally talented, almost like a great chef. He has this wonderful ability to match color, use materials that work well with the color, and he paints with a great strength.

What’s your relationship with Julian now?

Over the years we’ve become very good friends. But I don’t normally let that affect my judgment of an artist’s work. Sometimes being a friend of an artist is a disadvantage, because as you get close to them, you realize they’re human people with human idiosyn-crasies, faults, and positives and negatives. They’re your friends, and you admire them, but you don’t worship them from a distance. You notice their mistakes more. But I’m a great admirer of his work. Even in periods of our friendship when we’ve not been close, I’ve never lost that respect for his ability as a great artist.

You worked with Julian as a producer of his film Basquiat.

I did. It was a pleasure. Julian was right on budget, and he was pretty flexible as far as editing, because the film was much longer. He was reasonable and understood that every scene can’t be saved. That was his first film, and I think it’s one of his best. It did well financially, and it was just gener-ally a good experience. We were both very involved in it in terms of developing the script, in terms of discovering Jean-Michel’s background. In a way, the film is very much a part of Julian’s background. It’s really

almost a self-portrait of Julian, though it’s titled and about Jean-Michel.

How so?

I always thought that Julian and Jean-Michel were, of painters of that period, among the very best. Julian comes across as Jean-Michel does. They’re seen as being excessive, smok-ing cigars, going to fancy restaurants, travel-ing all over the world. That was held against them. There was a big article in The New York Times about “the excessive New York artist.” But they would be like Cub Scouts compared to artists today. At the time, they really did not live that excessively. I think a lot of that characterization comes from how the art world in the ’80s perceived the ’50s and ’60s. Artists then were supposed to be like de Kooning, not able to afford canvas. Or like the Impressionists. We’ve failed to remember—or failed to study—that there were many artists throughout history who were very wealthy and successful men and employed many people. I’m sure Rubens must have had 30, 40 people working for him. When Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons get smashed for having such big studios, I think it’s unfair.

Well, it’s a business of sorts.

In the case of Koons, I don’t think it’s really a business. It’s his desire to achieve perfec-tion. And that requires a big staff, it requires a huge amount of editing, and that’s what his work’s about.

Why haven’t Schnabel’s paintings had the kind of response that Koons’s work has?

I think it’s because Koons is perceived as a very modern artist in terms of what he does and how it’s part of the modern world. Julian comes more from the tradition of painting and crafts, and is more of a Renaissance man. It confuses people. People hear he’s a much better filmmaker than an artist, and that throws them off. How can somebody be so talented? I mean, if we were talking about Leonardo da Vinci, certainly we could say that Leonardo was a great scientist, a great painter, and a great architect. I’m not comparing him to Leonardo da Vinci, but I must say that Julian is, though not a scientist, an interesting architect, filmmaker, writer, painter, and sculptor. There are not many people who are even one quarter of those things in one package, and he’s really good at all of those things. There are not very many people who could decorate a room or make furniture like Julian.

Do you think that Julian’s paintings are going to see an increase in value similar to those by, say, Warhol?

No doubt. I can’t compare him to Warhol because Warhol passed more than 25 years ago, and we’ve had a chance to look at his

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work in retrospect. We’ve had a chance to study it and read hundreds of books about it. In 25, 30 years, I think people will look at Julian as one of the important artists of our time. If I were writing a Janson’s History of Art, Julian Schnabel would be in it. He prob-ably already is in it!

Julian doesn’t help himself, though, because his work carries him in a direction, in many cases, that’s not friendly to collec-tors and art-world people. The scale and the size of his work is usually enormous. It takes over a room—in a wonderful way, but it takes over. If you need a work on a small corner wall, he’s right away eliminated, because he doesn’t really have works like that. He’s very heroic, and his personality is such, his lifestyle is such. Have you seen the house he lives in in New York, Palazzo Chupi? Who else could pull that off? I per-sonally think it’s wonderful. I think his furniture is great: He has this gypsy-king kind of style that’s maybe Baroque or maybe 16th-century or early-17th-century Spanish. It comes from I don’t know where, but he has it, and it’s wonderful.

What are your ambitions for the show this fall?

I don’t think it’s the chicest show to have, because at the moment he’s not the flavor of the day. But people are really looking at his work. Younger artists—many of them whom I respect and know—have great respect for Julian. I’ve spoken to them, and they know the work on their own. Some of the artists who were not in favor in the ’80s and are very much in favor today also look at the work in a different light and see that there is a very important position there. I’m sure that many museums would like to acquire some of the work or have it gifted to them.

Julian’s show follows an exhibition of Warhol’s work. Was this intentional?

No. I show two exhibitions a year here. It’s the perfect space to have a one-man show. The bar is very high, because I’ve had some really wonderful artists show here. There was an Urs Fischer show in 2010 that was one of the best shows he has ever had.

What’s your role at the foundation?

It’s like the term “the buck stops here.” I pick art I really, really like. A lot of the financial people would say today that it’s not a good time to buy a Schnabel painting—if you’re collecting for value, which I’ve never done. It’s worked out for me financially, but that’s not been the principle. Since we have a foundation, we’re free to do what we want. That’s a great luxury, and I think that’s why the shows are very good. They’re free in that way. We collaborate with the artist, but we curate what we want to do with them. When I say “we,” for the show with Julian, I mean that you’re seeing it from the eyes

of a collector who spent many, many years collecting the work, understanding the artist, being involved with the artist.

You’ve commissioned Julian to do pieces of your family.

Yes. I have nine kids, and I commissioned him to do portraits, over the years, of each. He did two portraits of my wife, but I only have one. And then he did two portraits of me, of which I also only have one.

And he painted your mom, too.

He did a great one of my mom. My mother was a very elegant woman—she was always dressed to the T. You would never see her in slacks. She was very precise about her appearance. So when I suggested that Julian do her portrait, he said he would. It was done in Long Island in the ’90s. He’d also done a plate-painting portrait of my father. When he did the portrait of my mother, she came in a Spanish lace evening dress with her jewelry on. My mother sat there for, like, three days. Julian did it kind of salon-style, on plates, a very beautiful portrait. Then, when she saw the portrait, my mother said, “What is this? There’s not even a smile on my face—there’s just a stern look.” I said, “Well, you are stern sometimes.” She said, “No, no, no, no. I don’t like it.” After that, I said to Julian, “My mother doesn’t like it. Can you change it a little bit?” He said, “Sure.” So he took the painting back, and he painted the eyes out. It was incredible. You could tell immediately it was her. You could even tell it was her more than the previous version. I thought that was a very radical thing for him to do, and it led to those “Big Girl” paintings in which he did the same thing.

So your family is rooted in Julian’s story as an artist.

Yeah. I think he’s definitely one of the best portrait painters of our time.

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Julian Schnabel’s “The Walk Home” (1985); oil paint, plates, copper, bronze, fiberglass, and Bondo on wood; 112 inches by 232 inches.

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Julian SchnabelPORTRAIT BY GRANT CORNETT

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Do you remember when you first met Peter?

Yeah, it was when I was having the Whitney Museum exhibition in 1987. He had asked Larry Gagosian to buy a painting from me that was in the Whitney show, and Larry started at $25,000 and just kept raising it in $25,000 increments until I finally said yes. That was the first connection I had with Peter. [The art dealer and gallerist] Bruno Bischofberger knew him quite well, talked about him quite a bit, and then Peter and I just met. Peter was very interested in my work. He started to accumu-late things. He has a very specific eye. He’s someone I would say is an excellent collector.

He had, and continues to have, a large inter-est in American artists of the ’80s—Basquiat, David Salle, you.

I think he’s very interested in ’80s art. I think he’s also interested in what people are doing right now. He’s interested in artists like Christopher Wool, the generation after mine, up to the work of, say, Nate Lowman or the Bruce High Quality Foundation or Dan Colen. He’s very much in the present.

Obviously, Andy Warhol is a big god to Peter. He loves Andy’s work. The Warhol show he put on at the foundation this year—you don’t really see a private foundation put on a show like that. Although maybe we do now, whether it’s stuff that gets shown at the Beyeler Foundation or something that gets shown at Peter’s. I think there are a lot of private people taking on the responsibility in a less bureaucratic, freer way. They’re operating like museums.

Do you think some of the young artists Peter is collecting now are carrying on a sort of spirit of the ’80s?

No, that sounds like a nostalgic remark in some way, and I have no idea what it means. Do I think that any of these people have been influenced by my work in some way? You’d have to ask them. But it seems like some of their works have appearances that look like things I’ve done. That doesn’t make me feel bad. I guess what happens is work generates other work, and that’s what makes it last. There are always these ebbs and tides that happen in people’s lives. Life and art are in congress with each other. Good artists will still make good art, whatever the reason for making it—desperation or the utilitarian switch that gets flipped that day.

How do you think Peter has gone about selecting your work for his collection and the show?

My paintings aren’t like film or something that’s so electric-friendly and convertible. They’re something you have to go see, install, and make a pilgrimage to. At the show, there will be the opportunity to see some big, abstract plate paintings that nobody’s prob-ably seen in New York for quite some time.

It’ll also focus on works on paper, drawings, and objects I’ve made for years that might be lesser known but were always a thread in my work. There will be some paintings that were painted on different materials, like an Egyptian felucca sail I painted on in the winter of ’89. There will be some “Big Girl” paintings from the early 2000s and some other pictures from the late ’80s or ’90s. There will be some of the “Recognition” paintings that were painted on army tarps that were shown in the Cuartel de Carmen in Seville [in 1988]. And there will be some plate portraits—I think he wants to show my work as a portrait artist. He wanted to bring it up to date, with work from the late ’70s to the present.

The show will also feature some furniture pieces. You’re not really known as a furni-ture designer.

Right. I’ve never really mass-produced those things. I’ve made beds, tables, chairs for myself or for my friends. I made a building [Palazzo Chupi in Manhattan]. I guess the building was like a sculpture. I built swim-ming pools—I guess they’re like sculptures. And balustrades, welded things like that, casts. I’m always experimenting with materials, and traveling around has a lot to do with that. Just look at what’s in front of us. [Schnabel points to an old roof arch.] There were some great decisions made with these curves, no? But somehow this piece of tape that is wrapped around some sharp-angled iron is as beautiful as the calculated, measured, hot-rolled steel that has made this arch from a roof.

This could be a very nice garden someday. Maybe I’ll make it a garden.

Do you see yourself as a designer or architect?

No. But I guess I’m the architect of my life. I’m responsible for the place that I live in, and I like it a certain way. Sound is very important to me—the place that I live can’t be too noisy. And I like it if the ceilings are tall.

Let’s circle back to Peter. You’ve done por-traits of his family—his wife, his parents, his kids. He told me the one you did of his mother influenced the “Big Girl” series.

No, that’s not true. I could see him saying that, because I crossed something out in it. But I had already done that.

I heard his mother didn’t like your painting.

Yeah, she didn’t like it. She thought I painted her too hard, so I painted the whole top of the painting out.

The “Big Girl” paintings actually began in Houston in 1987. I had found some paintings by unknown artists in a junk store. I decided to add a layer of purple on top of them. One of the paintings was of a girl, and I decided to paint her eyes out. The small painting of the girl with no eyes was hanging on a wall at

my place in Montauk, and I thought it’d be a good model for a bigger painting. Fourteen years later, I made 14 paintings: four that were 13 feet tall, five that were 9 by 8 feet, and five that were 7 ½ by 7 feet.

I love the idea of intervening. It just seems like something’s never finished. It’s as if you’re seeing something being formed. I’ve always felt that looking at my paintings had to do with observing observation—you’re noticing yourself seeing something. It’s the same thing as turning off the sound when you’re watching a scene or putting music and an image together so that you get accumula-tively much more than you had before.

What do you think Peter’s role has been in your career?

I think he has a real feeling for my work, and he feels very proprietary about it in some sense. He doesn’t just own the things. He feels like he knows me really well.

Peter’s very driven, and he’s got a very specific plan about how all this art he’s showing fits together. He’s a historicist, and he’s making history the way he sees it with this foundation.

Many people seem to focus on the large size of your art. Why?

I don’t know that that’s all they talk about. But we could have sat inside, or we could have sat out here. The ceilings are a lot taller out here [Schnabel points to the sky], and there’s a lot of other stuff going on, too. I find that I like talking in this atmosphere. I don’t know why.

There probably has not been another inter-view given in this spot. I don’t know if that’s important or not. But it does feel good to have some dirt to put this stick into. [Schnabel pokes the end of a stick into the ground, flick-ing it in the dirt.]

I think that as I get older, I notice things. Things stop. Time stops. You just notice things and wonder what they mean. I like it when there’s not too much static.

I think it’s nice when art can actually live by its own nature. That’s hard, because it costs money to put on a show. There’s always the art market that people talk about, but really, that’s not what art has anything to do with. Artists make art so that they can see it—so that they can find order for themselves, com-pare it to things that they thought informed what they did or that they were curious about. They’re responding to what other people did, and they’re responding to themselves. And then, they’re looking at it and thinking, Is it a lie? Is it worth it? I wouldn’t want to just be somebody who made things so that other people wanted them, and then got money for them—and then that was it and I made some more things.

Tarkovsky once said that art is a representation of life. So it’s different from life, which includes death. Art, because it’s a representation, doesn’t include death. It’s IM

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a denial of death. Art is always optimistic, even if the characters are tragic. You could never have pessimistic art—you could have mediocre art or great art.

It’s about the eternal present. Painting, making objects, making things that live—this brings you into the eternal present of those things. If you saw Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica, it’d be the first time you saw it. It doesn’t matter that it was made after World War II. Or if you see a Caravaggio painting, it’s the first time you see it. And if it’s the second time you see it, it’s still the first time you see it.

What goes through your mind when you’re starting a painting?

I see things around. I leave things out. Certain things happen to them. I imagine them at a certain scale. It can be as ridiculous as a piece of veneer on a couch that’s been left outside in the rain. That little piece of veneer that’s separated, I’m looking at it, and it looks like a painting to me, even though it’s just a discarded piece of veneer. I had it photographed, blew it up to, I don’t know, 8 by 13 feet. I made the shape of it into something that looks almost like a headboard or ironing board, curved the edges, and printed it onto polyester. You look at it and you think you’re looking at wood, but you’re not. You’re looking at something that was nothing—and that’s something. And I put on some white. You decide if you want to paint on it with gesso or whether you want to paint on it with oil paint, because the oil paint will sit differently on the material. You use all your experiences on practice. They call it a practice, because you’re practicing. You practice, and then you get to a point and go, “Okay.” You take everything you know and you get to that place where you do something you don’t know anything about. That confusion, the not knowing, is the nature of it. If you know what you’re going to do and you’re just illustrating, then it’s pretty boring.

Do you come to a painting and figure it out as you go along or do you come to a painting with a big idea?

I have some things that start off looking pretty good before I touch them, but then I usually destroy or go against that.

“Destroy” is an interesting way of putting it. Do you feel like you’re destroying some-thing when you make a painting?

Sometimes something is pretty much perfect, but you can’t be terrified to touch it. I think the word “authenticity” comes into play. Somebody else might not understand it, might not understand what you see, but that’s not your problem. You don’t adjust it to make it easier for them to see, unless the person who says it to you really knows better than you do and you just realize they’re right. In general, I wouldn’t listen to them, because then people

get what they want rather than what you want.[Schnabel points at a stack of wood piled

in a corner of the garden.] I like the way these pieces of wood fit in that corner and go past that horizontal line. You know Blinky Palermo’s work? He was a good friend of mine. There’s a picture of him standing in a backyard with garbage, and I’m just saying, that little object there could be a painting. I think a lot of today’s young artists have come across things and started to notice they’re seeing art everywhere. Art is everywhere, and it also isn’t.

Do you think people just have to train their eyes to see art around them?

Yeah, I guess you do train your eye, but I don’t know that the system for training is as clear as the same way you do your abs or glutes.

When I look at things, a lot of the time I see shit happening. For example, here we are, and we’re looking at this piece of cement. [Schnabel points at a cemented stone wall.] There’s the white cement, and then there’s the gray cement. Doesn’t that gray cement look like there’s been a flood of some kind, and this flood of water is going past it with a certain velocity? It’s coming down those rocks, drip-ping down toward that piece of cardboard right there. It’s a very violent scene. I see it very clearly. There’s an anatomical and bio-logical way that things break up. Like these cracks in this cement wall here—they look like the lines on your palm. There are sugges-tions everywhere. Look up, and you see these leaves on a tree, and they look like the lines on your palm, too.

Did the plate paintings come about from seeing something around you?

I was in Barcelona, and I went to Park Güell. I saw how Gaudí embedded ceramics into the benches and columns surrounding the park. They were all very decorative, mixed with the dirt in a nice way, and they were quite flat. I saw this mosaic that had these jagged edges, and I thought, If I got broken plates… I wanted to agitate the surface. I wanted to do something to the surface, and then paint over it. I didn’t know how much image should be on it, if it should be one line. Putting one black line over white plates was very much the way Matisse painted the stations of the cross [at the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, France]. I hadn’t been there yet, and if I would have seen that, I might not have made the first plate paintings, because I would have thought they looked too much like the Matisse images.

The difference between young artists and young filmmakers: When young artists see something, if somebody did it, they don’t want to do it. There are some that will, but the real ones don’t want to repeat that. Filmmakers, they see something that some journeyman filmmaker did, and they think, Ah, that was a good thing to do—I’ll take that and use that in my movie, because that works. It’s more a journeyman’s appreciation. One time, Ron

Howard came up to me and said, “I love The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I have this part in my film where there’s a silence in sounding, and we call it a ‘Diving Bell moment.’” He was saying that as a compliment. It was very nice of him to say that, but God, I just don’t think like that. It’s not bad that he does. He has made some good movies. You have your influences.

Like Park Güell. What else?

I was influenced very early on by Clyfford Still. Even met him once.

The press often says you’ve reinvented yourself as a filmmaker, even though you’ve remained a painter. Why do you think they’ve focused on that?

Why listen to them? I didn’t reinvent any-thing. I basically was asked some questions about Jean-Michel [Basquiat], and I didn’t want a tourist to make a movie about him, so I tried to do it. It just so happens that people like my films, and I think they can relate to them because they see people doing things and they can react. When you look at a painting, there’s nobody intervening. You just have to deal with what it is. A painting is brutal or arduous—or sublime. Usually, those moments in the movies when there’s nobody in them, when you’re watching some kind of epiphany, is what it’s like to look at a painting. But it’s set up in a way that you maybe get your back massaged more.

Do you not like the press?

I find less and less that I care if people under-stand me. I don’t want to reach out to them and make them understand me or spend my time thinking about that. I really want to spend my time painting. I didn’t want to do this interview, but I did it because if people are interested in your work, then you should support them. Also, other people will see it [in the magazine]. The idea is for them to see it. But after a while you get a little grumpy as you get older. Cy Twombly, I think, felt unap-preciated for a long time, and when he was appreciated, he just had a chip on his shoulder.

Have you felt similarly?

Not really. Because I think Bob Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns really did overshadow Cy at first, then people realized that he was a great artist. I wish he had felt happier. I loved him.

What is it about interviews or the media that you just don’t have a taste for?

I’m not selling anything. It’s funny, because you want to be successful, you want your kids to have whatever they need, you want to pay for your food. I’m always amused that I can pay for dinner, so I pay for dinner a lot for people. I find it amusing because I was broke for a long time. >

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Schnabel’s “Large Girl With No Eyes” (2001); oil paint and wax on canvas; 162 inches by 148 inches.

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Critics haven’t always been kind to your paintings. Robert Hughes once wrote,

“Schnabel’s work is to painting what Stallone’s is to acting: a lurching display of oily pectorals.” You’ve had an interesting relationship with the press.

Robert Hughes never had an effect on my life in any way, and in fact, he never had an effect on anybody’s life. If you think about it, who are the artists Robert Hughes champi-oned whom we think about now? What is the great text that Robert Hughes wrote that we refer to? What is the great show that Robert Hughes curated that we all remember? He had a show on television called The Shock of the New—isn’t Breaking Bad about five million times better than that? He wrote a good book called The Fatal Shore. I just think he was an angry guy, and maybe I was an easy target.

I think people have to let art grow. You want to encourage young artists; you don’t just want to trample them to death. I’ve seen making art as an opportunity, a privilege to access things that are absolutely illogical. Obviously, nobody likes to be disrespected. But you don’t want too much respect, either.

[Schnabel points at a rusted steel panel.] Interesting. That’s quite a good thing, the back of this panel. You see the brown parts? They look like brown trees. There’s one in the fore-ground, other trees in the back. And it looks like there’s a lake, which is the hole. There are these big brown trees in front of the lake. I see shit like that all the time. There are so many paintings everywhere. I can’t figure out why more painters can’t find a more original way of putting paint down.

Do you remember when you first touched paint?

Yeah. I used to go to the Brooklyn Museum school. My mother used to buy tubes of paint for me. I was too young to be in the class, but I would sort of follow them around. I’d get a big, juicy tube of purple.

How did you respond to paint when you started playing with it?

I’ve been painting since I was very young. For a while, I didn’t know what it was. [Schnabel points at the steel panel again.] It takes a while to see trees and lakes—to see the gardens of Versailles—in that piece of shit over there.

I think about Walt Whitman a lot. Always did.

What is it about him that you think about?

Things exist on a horizontal plane. There’s no hierarchy—you can select anything. Once you do that, particularly when you’re making movies, you can interchange things. Also, the simultaneity of time: If you look at a painting like “St. Sebastian” or “Procession (for Jean Vigo)”—one of the wax paintings—they were made out of canvas, but I wanted them to look like I found a garage door that

I painted on. They do look like that. People are like, “Where’d you find that? How’d you make that?” I made it from scratch. You find things you can use.

People who know my paintings probably look at things, and go, “Oh, that looks like a Schnabel painting!” I look at the sky in Madrid, and I think Goya. He claimed the sky. I go to Belgium, and I look at a gray cabinet behind the house of Rubens, and I think Joseph Beuys. He claimed dull gray paint on wood.

Is this backyard a Schnabel painting?

No. It’s a backyard.

You mentioned authenticity earlier. How would you define authenticity?

It’s like an irrefutable act beyond logic. It can’t be broken down. If somebody’s authentic, it couldn’t be any other way. I’m just thinking about the line that Caravaggio painted in the forehead of a painting, just a white mark that is a furrowed brow of something, and you just go, “That’s authentic!”

What can we look at in your paintings and say, “That’s authentic!”

You have to find out for yourself.

(OPPOSITE) Schnabel’s “Untitled (Portrait of Stephanie)” (1994); oil paint, plates, and Bondo on wood; 80 inches by 60 inches.

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Susan SellersBY IAN VOLNER


Susan Sellers knows branding—but don’t tell that to her new employer.

As a founding partner of design powerhouse 2×4, she’s helped create visual identities for some of the biggest corporate and cultural players out there, from Prada to Tiffany, Harvard to Nike. (Sellers started 2×4 with colleagues Michael Rock and Georgianna Stout.) More importantly, perhaps, 2×4 has pioneered a language that’s become key to the look and feel of design today—generally an information-heavy, more-is-more approach perfectly suited to the Internet Age, as well as to the work of that arbiter of all things data-driven, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, a longtime 2×4 collaborator.

In an intriguing, somewhat unexpected career move, Sellers is now taking her creden-tials to a place that views the word “branding” with high-brow contempt: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she has just come on board as head of design. “It’s true design hasn’t played that much of a role here historically,” says Sellers, in an uncharacteristic moment of understatement. Occupying 2.4 million square feet on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the trea-sure house of art is a vast, multifarious jumble. It’s also, in many ways, a dinosaur, an academic musée des beaux-arts in a city of more nimble institutions like the Whitney and the New Museum. Traditionally, Sellers notes, the Met has operated like “a university” with 17 semi-autonomous curatorial departments. Often, this setup has resulted in a mixed message and blurred public image.

Bringing that image into focus will be Sellers’s task. Current Met director Thomas P. Campbell is endeavoring to unify his glorious cabinet of curiosities under the banner “One Met,” and in her new role Sellers will influ-ence design across the institution. “My job is to create connections,” Sellers says, “to reach out to new kinds of voices, and to work internally to create new dialogues.”

At present, her busy agenda includes rethinking the museum’s ticketing system (in the aftermath of the decision to abandon its colorful tin buttons); developing plans for improving visitor circulation; and, per-haps most dauntingly, considering how the narratives of the Met’s current buildings can be bridged with the Marcel Breuer–designed Whitney site, which the Met takes over in 2015. (The Whitney is relocating to a new Chelsea location.) “If you think about design and the Met, there’s so much opportunity,” says Sellers, who regards her transdisciplinary approach at 2×4 as perfect training for the new gig. She’s confident that her firm will keep chugging along in her absence, and in the meantime she may just invite a few friends over. “I would love to bring Rem’s thinking to bear here,” she says.

(OPPOSITE) Susan Sellers in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she is now the head of design.

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How did your understanding of art develop through your upbringing?

It largely has to do with growing up in New York. I feel like what I’m doing now has a lot to do with the art—and the art world that I sought out on my own, or sought me out—rather than something that was introduced by my parents or my father. What my father does is specific, and I think there are a lot of things psychologically that go into liking the things that your parents do—or the opposite. For me, the type of work and type of shows I was getting into was sort of my rebellion.

How did you come into the Marlborough Chelsea role? What were you hoping to achieve with that space?

Marlborough Chelsea evolved through a con-versation between my father and the princi-pal members of the gallery, and I think quite honestly the conversation revolved around the future of the gallery. There are not so many examples of galleries that have lasted generations. I think that’s because running a successful gallery requires passion and dedica-tion and a willingness to put the artist and the mission first. I think from quite an early age I felt that I wanted to pursue that mission, and the only way for me to do that was to be able to do what I’m doing now, and that’s to bring new work to the table, a new point of view, a new vision. Marlborough Chelsea is a separate gal-lery that operates under the umbrella that is Marlborough. It has its own space in Chelsea, its own website, and its own specific roster of artists. The mission is to build a tight-knit gallery that creates dialogues within its stable of artists. And hopefully can impact culture in a positive way, can promote work that we feel is of today and epitomizes progress.

Do you feel like your age has given you an advantage to inject new energy into a gallery that’s very established?

To be honest, once you cross a certain age, it really doesn’t matter. What matters to people is whether you’re efficient and whether you’re capable. So in terms of my age, personally, I rarely think about it. I realize that I’m young and that many of the people around me know a lot more than I do. What I try to do to make up for that is surround myself with the most knowledgeable and capable people possible.

Will your Broome Street space be pro-grammed differently from the Chelsea one?

I think it’s fair to say it’ll function in different ways. It’ll function as a space for neighbor-hood exhibitions—it will primarily be for art-ists whose shows will be more appropriate for a space like this, rather than our downstairs space in Chelsea. Furthermore, it could be appropriate for a project-room treatment, a singular body of work, or a specific grouping of work that makes sense in a smaller context.

What I’m really excited to do is to bring some historical shows to the Lower East Side.

Which doesn’t happen often.

No, it doesn’t happen often, but I think it’s a perfect place for it to happen because it’s a real neighborhood where there’s a dialogue. It was amazing doing the “Pizza Time” show. On the opening night, we had a pizza truck, which is always popular with people. The gallery is already a part of this neighborhood. You walk to the deli, and people are talking about the show. I think people should expect to come here and see really different things. In Chelsea, we’ve been doing some large group shows in the space, and these will continue. But as we develop, I think there will be more and more solo and two-person presentations.

Do you think art dealers in the 21st century have to embrace the Internet as well as the physical space? If so, how do you embrace the Internet as a dealer?

To be honest, I’m really, really bad with the Internet. But what I enjoy doing is [vis-iting] different websites, and things like Contemporary Art Daily have really changed the game. They give you access to installation shots of exhibitions that you have no chance of seeing. Most of my time on the computer is spent looking at work for a point of reference, to get an idea of the size and the scale and the artist’s intent.

Do you have your own art collection?

I do. It started a couple years ago. I don’t think there are any rules I’ve made for myself about collecting art. I usually buy things that are way too big for me to handle. They’re usually impulsive buys; I’ve been trying to work on that a little bit.

You must do a lot of political maneuvering to put on group shows. Are they a challenge?

What’s nice is that [director] Pascal Spengemann, [associate director] Vera Neykov, and I, we all creatively align to the same goal: to make this gallery as good as possible. We are a new entity here, and what we’re doing in Chelsea now is also new. In a lot of ways, we’re a new gallery in an old gallery. In order to get to the place we want, it’s about making the best shows possible. As far as the artists we represent, we have an incentive. The group shows have become a way to state a voice and a point of view, and they’ve also been very beneficial in terms of developing a new network. We’re constantly striving to develop.

Max LevaiINTERVIEW BY MARINA CASHDAN


Filling Marlborough Chelsea’s just-opened Broome Street gal-lery in New York’s Lower East Side earlier this fall were works all devoted to one subject: pizza. The motivating force behind the gallery’s inaugural show, “Pizza Time”—featur-ing pieces by artists ranging from John Baldessari to Darren Bader—is the 25-year-old gal-lerist Max Levai, who was appointed as principal direc-tor at Marlborough Chelsea two years ago. One of the oldest and most established blue-chip galleries in the busi-ness, Marlborough was opened more than six decades ago in London by Levai’s great-uncle, Frank Lloyd, and its locations in New York, Spain, and Monaco are now over-seen by his father, Pierre. (His uncle, Gilbert Lloyd, heads the London gallery.) Running the new space and a renovated Chelsea location reopening this November, Levai is instilling an unconventional spirit into the art-world juggernaut.

(OPPOSITE) Max Levai in front of a Catherine Ahearn work at his Broome Street gallery’s “Pizza Time” exhibition.

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In the U.S., “business conference” has become synonymous with past-their-prime hotels, complimentary drawstring bags, and buffet tables. But attendees of this year’s Summit Series, the annual symposium founded by Elliott Bisnow in 2008 and located in Eden, Utah, experienced a new take on a tired practice: Instead of clichéd ice breakers, they bonded over falconry and field drawing classes; instead of PowerPoints and panels, they talked about sex with psychologist Esther Perel; instead of a tablecloth dinner in a hotel convention center, they had an outdoor picnic at a quarter-mile-long table that a marching band led them to.

In truth, Summit isn’t really a business conference. The goal, according to Jeremy Schwartz, a co-founder of Summit along with Brett Leve and Jeff Rosenthal, is to bring together a group of people from a range of industries, urge them to turn off their cell phones, and see what happens. “We’re trying to make people drop their ego at the door and really connect with one another,” Schwartz says. “From that, doing business and inspiring each other is the next logical step.”

Maybe there’s something in the air at Powder Mountain, which the Summit founders

purchased in 2012. Entrepreneur Greg Mauro, now a Summit partner, initiated and facilitated the reported $40 million sale. But whatever the group is doing, it seems to be doing right: The series started out with only 19 attendees at its first conference, and this year it had 900. (To house the guests, Summit built a temporary city on the mountain, complete with more than 500 tents for sleeping, a duck pond, a bar, a gym, and a teepee for gathering.) After attending, those who make the trek out to Summit find themselves nostalgic for the summer camp–like world they leave behind, and many come back to recreate the experience the next year.

Summit is about unplugging and connect-ing—which happens over meditation sessions, impromptu dance parties, and wilderness sur-vival lessons—but according to its founders, its long-term impact is in the entrepreneurial support that stems from it. “When you put ideas out to the Summit community, you tend to get enhanced versions of your ideas back in return,” Schwartz says. “I tend to find that if you’re only surrounded by the people in your industry, you get tunnel vision.”

Leaders in art, design, music, tech, and nonprofits—including Ace Hotel Group

co-founder Alex Calderwood (see page 152), street artist JR, and NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous—were among Summit’s guests this summer. (Full disclosure: Surface Media CEO Marc Lotenberg has attended three of the conferences.) That range, accord-ing to two-time attendee Ivy Ross, who is Art.com’s chief marketing officer, reflects the founders’ ability to gauge the group’s multifac-eted interests. “Sometimes you go to a hotel for a conference, and it’s a very different experience from the real world,” she says. “But here they try to take what’s important to the group—art, music, science—and create an experience out of that. It’s a mini fractal of society.”

Summit SeriesBY ALLIE WEISS

PHOTOS BY DAVID BRUNETT

From left to right, architect Steve Bull; artist Prune Nourry; artist Jane Kim; designer Hannes Wingate; photogra-pher Jimmy Chin; producer Sol Guy; architect Jenny Wu; mobile developer Rameet Chawla; designer Søren Rose; entrepreneurs Neil Blumenthal, Jesse Genet, and Ivy Ross; musician LP; and street artist JR.

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Ivy Ross

“My entire life, I’ve been a bit of a rebel in big companies,” says Ivy Ross, whose background includes stints at a number of retail giants, including Calvin Klein, Coach, and Swatch. After starting her career as a metalsmith and jewelry designer —her work has been shown at 10 museums, including London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and New York’s Cooper-Hewitt—Ross switched to the corporate track. She rose through the ranks, taking on a number of prestigious roles, including one as the head of design and product development for toy giant Mattel’s girls division, followed by another as the executive vice president of marketing at Gap. She has since returned to her artistic roots as the chief marketing officer of Art.com. “We sell not the original art, but the art image, for maybe $150 instead of $5,000,” says Ross, 58. “We’re trying to democratize art to allow anyone to have an image that resonates with them.” Through programs like Art Sparks Learning, Art.com’s year-old philanthropic venture, the company brings art to public schools by letting students and teachers choose prints for their classrooms and providing art supplies for children to make their own works. At Summit this year, Ross held “office hours” in the woods to discuss fellow guests’ ideas in 10-minute meetings. The natural setting, to Ross, is one of Summit’s best selling points: “I think nature is the most creative place, because the universe is the best designer.”

Three of this year’s Summit Series attendees share their current projects—and talk about how Summit fits into their life and work.

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Neil Blumenthal

Warby Parker, the eyewear company founded by Neil Blumenthal, David Gilboa, Andrew Hunt, and Jeffrey Raider in 2010 has helped make thick-rimmed frames cool again (and affordable, at an average price of $95). The brand started out as what felt like a wild idea dreamed up by four Wharton students, but in the three years since its launch, it has grown to be, as Blumenthal puts it, “part of the cul-tural zeitgeist.” For every pair of glasses sold, a monetary donation goes to one of Warby’s partnering nonprofits, which then distributes glasses. “We thought that it was a powerful idea, and a transformative idea,” he says. “But never in a million years would we have imagined that in three years we would have 300 employ-ees and have provided more than 500,000 pairs of glasses to people in need.” In short, Blumenthal says: “It’s been a crazy ride.” Since April, Warby has opened up four new brick-and-mortar shops—two in New York, one in L.A., and one in Boston—and is planning to launch more. In September, Mickey Drexler, the retail maven who heads J.Crew, joined the board of directors—a sign that Warby is here to stay. The 33-year-old Blumenthal, who worked for the nonprofit Vision Spring before co-founding Warby, has used his Summit con-nections to create new outlets for the brand: He collaborated with fellow attendee Adam Braun, the founder of Pencils for Promise, on a special line of glasses—the proceeds of which went to fund a school in Ghana.

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Rameet Chawla

By analyzing metrics to anticipate mobile trends, Rameet Chawla and Fueled, the New York–based company he founded in 2011, build apps for companies that will stay relevant in the ever-changing technological landscape. But Chawla, 30, hopes Fueled will do more than just make good apps for its clients, which have included HBO, Uniqlo, and Procter & Gamble.

“Ideally, our products will in some way change the way people use technology for the better,” Chawla says, “and as a result might change the way they use dated pieces of technology—anything you could define as traditional.” The company started out as a development-based shop under a different name, but added mobile design when it became Fueled. “Our design team now is coming close to being considered one of the top in the world,” Chawla says. “It’s awesome to get that kind of traction.” Part of the company’s success is due to Summit (of which Chawla is a founding member): Fueled has secured more than a million dollars in design-and-development consulting for fellow Summit attendees. Summit’s influence on Chawla’s endeavors has extended to social-good projects. After leaving his first conference, he decided to help develop a nonprofit called Charity Swear Box that checks users’ Twitter feeds for swear words and encourages them to donate a dollar per curse to charity. In June, Fueled officially opened a collective workspace in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood that it shares with 25 other startups.

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Indianapolis Museum of ArtBY DAVE KIM

PHOTOS BY TIM KLEIN

It may come as a surprise that the American museum set to open 10,000 square feet of gal-lery space dedicated to design is in Indianapolis, where car races can draw more crowds in a couple of weekends than art institutions do in a year. But to those who have paid attention to the Indianapolis Museum of Art in recent years, the unveiling of a $1.2 million gallery renovation and some 430 design objects on the IMA’s third floor this November is just one more step—albeit a big one—down a familiar path. Since 2007, the museum has expanded its decorative arts collections at breakneck speed (thanks in large part to design curator R. Craig Miller, who retired this past spring), and in 2009 it mounted a major show on European design. Now it’s home to one of the largest displays of contemporary design in the U.S.

The new galleries pick up where the IMA’s pre-1945 collection leaves off. Visitors make their way through a timeline of post–World War II design before postmodernism, and then enter a 9,000-square-foot main gallery for the collection’s primary focus: design after 1980. Here, one finds a veritable candy store of the contemporary. Works by long-estab-lished icons like Frank Gehry and Alessandro Mendini share the spotlight with pieces by Hella Jongerius and Marcel Wanders, with newcomers like Maarten Baas also making the cut. The clever layout of the space recalls a nine-square grid; there are exceptions and outliers, but generally one can walk forward and backward through three different decades (’80s, ’90s, and the aughts) and left and right through aesthetic schools (modernism, post-modernism, and expressionism).

“It’s not a true industrial-design installation, where you see how design developed out of the manufacturing process,” IMA director Charles Venable says. “From 1980 to today, I think the inverse really happened. You see an extraordinary burst of creativity in the late 20th, early 21st century, when designers were doing some things that were very related and other things that could not be more different.”

The relatively open floor plan is a departure from traditional exhibition layouts that Venable calls “exceedingly linear”; it’s meant to show how seemingly discrete design styles often overlap or occur simultaneously. One might be surprised to learn, for example, that Marc Newson’s Embryo chair, resembling a sleek black squeaky toy on steel legs, shared the 1980s with Robert Venturi’s Louis XVI chest, a jazzed-up tribute to neoclassicism. Or that Konstantin Grcic’s neatly polygonal Chair One was produced in 2004, the same year that Patrick Jouin debuted his epoxy tangle of a side chair, the Solid C2. Unlikely intersections—and clashes—between the so-called schools abound. “It’s a very rich, woven tapestry,” Venable says of the collection.

In addition to showroom-design pieces and limited-edition objets d’art, consumer items like the Dyson vacuum and Apple computer, both of which have become de rigueur in American design exhibits, are also showcased on the low, cantilevered platforms of the gal-leries. “People will see things that they’ve seen before and probably used before,” says Lara Huchteman, exhibition designer for the new galleries, “but never really considered all the ideas and thought behind them.”

Domestic products, including tea sets and tableware by Michael Graves, are sure to meet nods of recognition—and maybe even stir up some hometown pride. (Graves, despite his claim to the New York Five, was born and raised in Indianapolis.) But for the global arena, the IMA’s wide-ranging and continually growing collection, stocked with commercial products and rare aficionado-pleasers alike, primes the museum to compete head to head with—and perhaps outpace—some of America’s most respected design destinations.

The Solid C2 chair (2004) by Patrick Jouin in IMA’s new design gallery. (OPPOSITE) IMA director Charles Venable and exhi-bition designer Lara Huchteman.

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ShinolaBY JULIA COOKE

PORTRAIT BY ROY RITCHIE

“Welcome to Detroit, the new watchmaking capital of America.”

This is how Shinola, the watch- and bike-making company launched by Fossil founder Tom Kartsotis and led by creative director Daniel Caudill, says hello on its website. It’s an ambitious statement that matches the company’s equally ambitious mission: to bring high-quality manufacturing, and the jobs it creates, back to the United States from foreign countries, starting with watches in Detroit.

“Building a Swiss watch factory in Detroit is a pretty awesome feat in the first place,” Caudill says. Shinola has accomplished that in the years since Kartsotis conceived the line in late 2011, and the company has enjoyed a warm reception. When a limited series of watches debuted online in March, 2,500 units sold out in eight days. In the summer, Shinola intro-duced a collection of watches, bikes, leather goods, and journals; the brand now has shops in New York and Singapore, and a shop-in-shop at Colette in Paris opens this November.

The base in Detroit has been a key part of Shinola since its start. Caudill, who trained as a product designer, was working as a brand consultant in Los Angeles and looking to move back into design, and Kartsotis had reduced his role at Fossil in search of new ventures. After Kartsotis and Caudill met through mutual friends, they began talking about what an American-made watch brand might look like. One of the first details the brand’s initial leadership group settled on was the location of company headquarters. “Immediately, you think, where is the manufacturing?” Caudill says. “We naturally gravitated toward Detroit.”

For a name, they decided to pay homage to the shoe polish brand that “you don’t know shit from,” as the saying goes. The company then partnered with the family-owned Swiss manufacturer Ronda, which makes the movement for the brand’s locally assembled watches. From there, Shinola was born.

The company’s Detroit digs are in the Argonaut Building, a brick-and-limestone Art Deco structure, designed by Albert Kahn and built in 1928, that was once a design laboratory for General Motors. The watchmaking facility is here, and the bikes are built two miles away at the brand’s retail store, where visitors can sip fresh cold-pressed juice at a bar run by Drought, a Plymouth, Michigan–based organic juice company.

The Manhattan retail space, located in Tribeca, is like a library for an adventurer-industrialist: airy, clean, and masculine. The shop, designed by Rockwell Group, features chairs with giant strips of crisscrossed leather, vintage brass lighting fixtures, and modular pegboard walls for display. A brass Mercator map hangs on one of the store’s white-painted brick walls. Up front, local restaurant The Smile runs a walnut-clad coffee bar. In design-ing the store, architect David Rockwell wanted to make a space that “would in some ways be based on this mythology of American industri-alism, the romance of the handcrafted and the connection between an object and the maker,” he says.

Throughout the space, families of seemingly disparate products reveal Shinola’s expansive goals. The displays are organized by color: Simple, shiny watches with pink and tan leather bands sit alongside similarly toned journals made by Edwards Brothers Malloy, the Ann Arbor–based manufacturer that produces Shinola’s paper goods. Sturdy yet elegant purses, wallets, iPad cases, and other accessories are made from Horween leather by the Missouri outfit Eric Scott. Bikes displayed throughout showcase the work of Sky Yaeger, the Bianchi veteran who heads Shinola’s bicycle program. This collaborative bent, Caudill says, is one of his favorite aspects of Shinola—part of the reason why it has three U.S.-based design and manufacturing partners.

With a production target of 45,000 watches this year and other wares and collaborations in the works, Shinola has quickly grown to 120 employees. At least, that’s how many there were at press time. “It literally changes every day,” Caudill says. “The fact that I can’t keep up with how many people we’re hiring—it’s all amazing.”

(OPPOSITE) Shinola creative director Daniel Caudill in the company’s Detroit headquarters.

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(ABOVE AND OPPOSITE) Shinola’s flag-ship in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighbor-hood, designed by Rockwell Group.

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You grew up in Greenwich Village. When did you first become interested in architecture?

I’ve thought about this a lot lately, because I’ve realized that a lot of the pleasures and experiences of my childhood had to do with the sense of neighborhood—the architec-ture and the layout of the Village. I was, as a little boy, already aware of what [writer and activist] Jane Jacobs had done in the Village, because I came from a very left-wing family. My parents were politically involved, so Jane Jacobs was a figure in my childhood. The nature of the Village and the nature of a com-munity and a neighborhood, what I loved about the city, what made me proud to be a New Yorker, what I identified with as part of

my identity—that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. These issues have been, in a cer-tain sense, very obvious and straightforward, because they are the way I grew up. I think a lot of it has come naturally. I don’t say that to be pompous, but only to say it’s an inevitable way of looking at cities.

Early in your career you were an editor at I.D. magazine and the architecture critic for New England Monthly. How did those positions shape how you think about architecture?

I kind of lucked into that I.D. job right out of school. I happened to meet the editor. What that experience really gave me was a toehold in the world of journalism. I learned how

Since the late Ada Louise Huxtable began as the first archi-tecture critic at The New York Times in 1963, the position has served as a beacon voice of the design world. In 1973, Paul Goldberger took over the role, winning a Pulitzer in 1984. The paper then brought on Herbert Muschamp (1992–2004) and Nicolai Ouroussoff (2004–2011). Michael Kimmelman, the longtime chief art critic at the Times, became the paper’s archi-tecture critic two years ago and has brought a civic-minded voice to the post, putting his focus on street-level concerns—social issues, infrastructure, public space—rather than the latest bold-faced building by a big-name architect. So far, Kimmelman has addressed everything from a Frank Lloyd Wright house set for demolition, to Norman Foster’s plans for renovating New York Public Library’s main building, to the design blight that is Penn Station, to protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Surface spoke with him at the café in the Renzo Piano–designed New York Times Building about his ambitions for broadening notions of architecture and life.

MichaelKimmelmanINTERVIEW BY SPENCER BAILEY


(OPPOSITE) New York Times architec-ture critic Michael Kimmelman at the company’s headquarters.

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to lay out magazines, commission people, edit, do interviews, write. A lot of that was the foundation for what became my career, which I had not necessarily thought was the career I would pursue. I thought it was really cool, this world, and it included, by the way, product design, industrial design, graphic design. I remember the time I was handed a press release for a new carpet store opening on Third Avenue. I thought not only was it cool, but the press packet for it was cool. I loved being in that world. Immediately, I related to it. The experience at I.D. was formative in a couple of ways, both on the journalistic side and also in introducing me to the world of design and architecture professionally. I saw it as a broad playing field in which architecture was not simply about buildings, and that the world of design included all aspects of the built environment.

New England Monthly started my journalism career—I began to write for it as a student at Harvard. I was enlisted by New England Monthly to do some architecture writing. It was a fantastic, short-lived publication. It introduced me to what high-level journalism could be.

From 2007 to 2011, while based in Berlin for the Times, you covered culture, as well as political and social affairs. Did this experi-ence inform your thinking on architecture?

Totally. Before that, I was the art critic of the Times, and I enjoyed it. I got the job when I was very young, and I spent a lot of time learning how not to make an idiot of myself in public. But I always felt a certain discom-fort within the confines of the art world, especially as the art world became more focused on fashion and money. I don’t want to come across as a fogey, and that’s partly why I didn’t want to continue writing about art and seem grumpy. It just didn’t allow me to address the things I cared a lot about.

What I tried to do in Europe is reconnect the issue of culture with a capital “C” to the larger world, to see how culture is a window through which we can understand politics and social affairs. I thought this would return culture to its larger role and give it the importance it deserved and also allow me to address the kinds of things I thought mattered most.

This job is a continuation of that ambition, but with a very specific focus, which I lacked in Europe. Over there, I would write about Gaza one week, negritude in France another week, and then German Holocaust culture another week. That was stimulating and fantastic, but [my current role] allows me to continue to address how we live and to do so through issues of design, urbanism, architecture. For me, that was what I was ultimately after in Europe: to ask questions of how we live. Now I can ask questions of how we live and also how we should live. I see it all as a natural progression. To me, all this makes perfect sense, even if from the outside it looks like I’ve been skipping

around over the years. Although, I have to say, change is good. It’s very important, I think, to come at things fresh. Coming back to this field after many years—and coming back to New York—allows me to see things through often-ignorant eyes. I learned in Europe that when you see things fresh, and when you don’t know things, you sometimes ask stupid but also good questions, which people no longer ask. You don’t take for granted the kinds of things that everyone has come to accept. I think that period was great for me to get away and then come sideways into an area in which I had no axes to grind, no real assumptions, and could ask a lot of stupid questions.

The architecture world can be one big echo chamber. It needs an outside voice.

I think it’s also in a moment of change. I would have been interested in and written about the same things 10 years ago, but I don’t think the climate was right. There has to be a certain moment when people are interested in certain issues.

Exactly. Occupy Wall Street and Zuccotti Park happened right when you started as the architecture critic.

Zuccotti Park was a terrific way to address very powerful questions that were out there, but had not maybe been as clear until Occupy, and those were: Who owns public space? What is the nature of public space? What is the political role of public space? I think after a period of enormous economic prosperity and big spending, and especially at a time when architecture has capitalized on projects of material invention and spectacular design, people were ready to ask: What about the spaces in between those buildings?

The thing I found most powerful was that it was a reminder that the real, physical spaces we occupy have a power greater than any cyberspace we devise. A few hundred people occupying a small, previously unknown park in Lower Manhattan can occupy headlines for weeks and open up all sorts of discussions about the meaning of democracy and the nature of our society that I think even a million people signing a petition online would not provoke. There was the power of space, and the people who occupied that space actually devised for themselves a mini city, until it became a crazy, lunatic place that fell apart, inevitably. What was that about? It was about the relationship between the cities, spaces, and buildings we design, what our values are, and where power lies.

For your debut column, rather than cover, say, a trophy building by Frank Gehry, you chose Grimshaw and Dattner’s Via Verde housing complex in the Bronx.

Via Verde presented what I felt was a very crucial question: What is the value of

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architecture? When you talk about luxury buildings or museum extensions or whatever, you often talk about the value of architecture in a really abstract way: It’s beautiful, it adds some sort of landmark to the city, it occupies the space of art. In the case of something like affordable housing, the question becomes: What is the value of quality architecture? It rephrased the question, to me, in a very pro-found way, forcing an answer, which was: The building becomes an emblem of equity. It says that quality architecture is not exclusive to Manhattan and the nicer parts of Brooklyn. It invests affordable housing with a dignity that states how important it is to the city. It also becomes an object that the people who occupy it will wish to preserve, because they’ll understand that it’s something that’s valuable to them and their neighborhood as well.

To me, this was an important way to start a conversation about architecture, because it returned it to questions of equity, social responsibility, the city at large. It was a reminder that a museum is no more important than a housing project or hospital.

Do you find architects nowadays are think-ing about these social issues more?

I do. I think there’s a generational shift. Partly it’s the shift in the economy and the opportunities to do the sort of projects that are abundant when there’s a lot of money. I think there was also exhaustion within a certain line of thinking about architecture. It’s one of the most useful facts of culture that the pendulum swings—generations zag when the last one zigged. I think there are a lot of designers and architects who are trying to connect their work to the larger world.

There were a lot of good reasons why architects were focused on issues of mate-rial and formal invention and why a culture of stardom has shaped the architectural conversation. But it also seems to me a very profound impoverishment of the role of architecture in the world, which is to help shape how we live. By having such a narrow focus, the conversation also excluded vast numbers of people who were interested in issues of public transportation, affordable housing, the waterfront, climate change, bike riders, all these things that are in a sense inseparable when we talk about cities.

Many of these issues were also the focus of Ada Louise Huxtable, who died earlier this year at 91. What’s your relationship to her work?

When I was a boy, she was writing for the Times, and I remember reading her. There were these two really powerful women, Jane Jacobs and Ada Louise, who for me were formative in thinking about the way one regards the built environment—and the role of the critic. I aspire to do what I think Ada was able to achieve in marrying the role of shaper of policy with critic of architecture.

For me, the fundamental gift of the job is to try to be a public advocate, to move archi-tecture and the conversation about design beyond aesthetic questions and have it play the role it deserves in the public sphere and on the political stage. I’ve reached a point in life in which I’m comfortable being an advo-cate. I don’t think the distinction between advocacy and criticism is particularly clear or even meaningful. I think advocacy is sort of my role, and the Times has so far been spectacularly indulgent and allowed me to go out on a few limbs. The paper plays a very special role as a public forum, as a place where people with lots of shared, overlap-ping interests, who might not have a place to meet, come together. That has allowed me to contribute to certain conversations, like the one about the future of Penn Station, for instance.

Some buildings you’ve covered, like SHoP’s Barclays Center and Archea’s Cantina Antinori winery, are eye-catching, yet you looked at them largely through a social lens. Do you think a building can be architecturally gutsy—or even shocking—and still serve the social or public good?

My feeling is that most, if not all, architects want to create something beautiful, lasting, and remarkable, but want also to create something that’s meaningful, useful, and contributes something to the people who use it. A project like Barclays is a good example of how a narrow conversation limits the larger function of architecture in the world. If you just talked about Barclays as an aesthetic object, you would be ignoring the entire question of the rest of the develop-ment [surrounding the arena], which will, in turn, alter the appearance of Barclays. Like all works of architecture, it’s not a sculpture on a pedestal in a museum. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A piece that just talks about the physical, aesthetic qualities of the build-ing overlooks the reality of the building, its use, and what the designers must have been thinking when they made it. The question of whether they work and how they work is inseparable.

Last fall, when you wrote about a devel-oper’s plans to knock down a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Phoenix, the news was a shock to many. A couple months later, it was saved by a preservation-minded buyer with the help of a Wright conservation group. How did it feel to have someone take action on your words?

To the extent that I contributed to that, I’m thrilled. There were a lot of people who were involved in campaigning, putting in the money, putting in the hours. I was really happy to use the pulpit that I’ve been given to add a little noise to that cause. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I want what I write to play some practical role when it can and where

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it matters. In a case like the Wright build-ing, it’s a reminder that the bully pulpit and journalism generally have a fundamental role in democracy.

A recent article in New York magazine called you a “crusading voice,” and I think a lot of what you’re doing is, in fact, cru-sading. It’s taking action on architectural issues that exist in the world somewhere and that many aren’t focusing on because there’s no one giving them the attention they deserve.

The truth is that there are people who are acting upon all these things, whether they’re people occupying Gezi Park in Istanbul or Tahrir Square in Egypt, whether they’re trying to save a building by Frank Lloyd Wright or trying to fix Penn Station. One of the roles that I can play is to be a mega-phone. I can bring together people who might not realize they have shared interests and give them an argument and a voice. But I also just write about what interests me. It’s a rare thing in life that you actually get to write what you seriously believe. I do this because I actually think it matters. It matters to me, and even if nobody paid attention, I would want to write the same thing. It isn’t about getting attention for myself. It really isn’t. I hope that what I write—and the way I write—will attract people’s interests and cause them to react, and hopefully agree.

You’ve had many powerful targets: the Dolan family, who owns Madison Square Garden; the New York Public Library’s trustees, who have approved plans for a controversial Norman Foster renovation; MoMA, which has proposed tearing down Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s American Folk Art Museum building. I’m sure the responses haven’t always been pleasant. How do you handle them?

I’ve been a critic a long time. I’m a big boy, and they’re big men and women, too. These issues are big ones that concern the fate of the city, and they have to do with public responsibility. I try to write responsibly—I never write out of personal animus. I have nothing against the library’s board members. I want the Dolans to end up with a better Garden and for the city to end up with a better station. I really do. I would say that, on the whole, the conversations I’ve been engaged in are civil and serious, and I think the people who run these places are serious people. The question is arriving at the best thing for the city and the public. That’s what should be everyone’s goal.

Norman Foster called your piece on his library plan “both offensive and premature” in a letter to the Times. What did you think of that?

Norman Foster is a great architect who has

done great things. That doesn’t mean that everything he does is great, and the project under discussion here, I think, in its early iteration, was not his best work. But that’s not a closed book. There are other things he’ll produce, and I look forward to seeing them. I’m not doing this to be Norman Foster’s friend. The question is whether the design of the library turns out well. That’s the only thing that matters. But we’re all human. I certainly can’t blame him to be unhappy to be criticized so publicly.

Your pieces on Penn Station, which pushed for an expiration date on the Garden’s permit, helped result in a 10-year limited permit.

I’m very amazed and pleased that what seems like one of the saddest places in the city—or in any city actually—now might have a shot at being improved. New York might get an arena, a station, and a rail system it deserves and needs. I was very pleased to have looked into that question and asked early on: What’s happening, and what are the instruments available to bring about change? The timing was right, both in terms of the special permit and the political season, and that has become the lever for change. But what’s happened now is that we’ve moved the ball from the end zone, where it was dead, to the two-yard line. All the hard work now lies ahead. That work has to—this is a very important point—involve improvements to transit, high-speed rail, tunnels, and tracks, no less than it involves improvements to the physical space of Penn Station. The economy and health of the city—in fact, of the whole Eastern seaboard—depends upon it. It’s not just about a building or some fancy design. That’s the least of it. It’s about creating the kind of system and space that moves New York into the 21st century and matches the kinds of changes underway on the West Side. Otherwise, thrilling though it has been to see the prospect of change, it seriously could go nowhere. That has to not happen.

What would you like to focus on next?

In New York, we’ve had a mayor who has made profound physical changes to the makeup of the city and who has had the financial abilities to do so. The next mayor is going to be presented with all sorts of challenges just to sustain those changes, plus they’ll have to deal with the prospect that we saw with Sandy, with disasters, the political complications of places like Penn Station, the pressures of development in Midtown and Brooklyn. I’ll be focused on questions of the new administration and what their inter-ests are in changing the city. I’m also very interested in how cities like San Francisco are going to create new models for greater metropolitan areas and whether America can do as some European countries have done by dealing with issues of shrinking cities,

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to be able to consolidate, change, adapt. Americans are so focused on the idea that progress involves growth. The very idea of shrinkage seems un-American.

Do you think architects are thinking simi-larly in terms of shrinkage?

I do. There are all sorts of openings for archi-tects who are thinking about adaptive reuse, temporary structures, improving the quality of public architecture—places like hospitals, schools, and many institutions that have not really gotten attention from the great-est architects. One can see around the world how lots of young architects now have come up with really interesting and innovative ways of dealing with these challenges. I think this is a great moment. It’s a difficult and complex moment, but a moment of enor-mous possibility. Everybody’s talking about how cities are growing, how the world is becoming more and more urban. People are confronting the obvious truths about cars, highways, mass transit, density, the health and value of cities. It’s taken us a long time to arrive at this point. We have literally hun-dreds of cities with million-plus populations growing around the world. The challenges are enormous, but I’m actually kind of opti-mistic, especially as a young generation is given an opportunity to rethink the world for themselves. This will be a new revolution.

You write a lot about New York, but you’ve also started looking at other American cities, like Louisville and Las Vegas. Do you find your voice is being heard and your influence felt outside of New York City?

I know I upset a few people in Louisville by suggesting that their building a highway through the middle of town was probably not the most logical or healthy thing to do. Whether people are listening to me or not, I think they’re coming around to the reality that America has depended for too long on a subsidized suburban lifestyle that is unsus-tainable. You see even a city like Phoenix developing a very extensive and success-ful light-rail system, a city like Las Vegas thinking seriously about how to redevelop its downtown and link it through public transport to the Strip and areas beyond. Even in places like that, people are rethink-ing the suburban model of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. We have to. A tank of gas is getting too expensive to make that lifestyle sustain-able for many families.

Which makes another subject you write about a lot—public space—so key to this conversation.

I think that’s right. As much as we in America value private property and individual rights, I think it’s human nature to want to par-ticipate in a society and feel like you’re not alone, like you’re emboldened. How do we

design our world to make that possible? We have to make those spaces. They don’t have to be fancy. They don’t have to be made out of marble and granite and bronze, but we do need to design them. That’s where democ-racy ultimately happens. Some of it happens on the web, and some of it happens in the voting booth, but a lot of it just happens in public space.

Speaking of the web, you seem to be pretty active on Twitter.

I have been intrigued by Twitter. In the beginning [of my tenure as architecture critic], I felt it was important to provide some sort of public access. I had imagined that an open forum could be created on the Times website. That has proven difficult, but Twitter is turning out to be an interest-ing way in which it’s possible to say certain things, to write on subjects in 140 characters, and to even be a little more open and acces-sible. I still have to figure out how to do it properly, but I do think it can be very useful.

Twitter is, in a way, the public space of the Internet.

Right. Which has its uses. It definitely does. And for somebody like me, it’s an alternative to a full piece. Sometimes, it turns out, it’s possible to say something in 140 characters that’s actually meaningful. But I won’t say the most important thing I’ve ever written is a tweet. That would be a little too pathetic.

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GaryFriedmanBY ALLIE WEISS

PORTRAIT BY ADRIAN GAUT

Rain Room, the exhibition that generated lines up to nine hours long at MoMA this summer, was built on a simple concept: trust. Visitors entered the 1,000-square-foot space, saw pour-ing rain, but—by some feat of what felt like magic—stayed dry as they moved through it. Upon entering, they trusted that the exhibition would protect them from getting wet—or so Gary Friedman, the chairman emeritus, cre-ator, and curator of Restoration Hardware, interpreted the work.

“It really hit me,” Friedman recalls of his first reaction to Rain Room. “If you want to enter the exhibition, you have to walk through the rain—you have to believe in it.” Friedman promotes a similar system of faith at Restoration Hardware, which was officially rebranded as RH in 2012. He and his employees wear macramé bracelets with the word “Believe” inscribed on a silver tag to indicate their devotion to the company’s values—a set of written rules penned two years ago by Friedman, who’s been at the company since 2001.

To Friedman, Rain Room seemed like the ideal work to launch RH Contemporary Art, a platform that he had been developing since first coming up with the idea nearly a decade ago. In consultation with the art advisor and former gallerist Holly Baxter, now the vice president of RH Contemporary Art, Friedman made a move to purchase Rain Room from its artists, the London-based group Random International. After the Barbican arts center in London showed a prototype of Rain Room last fall, RH hoped to find an exhibition space for the work in the U.S.

MoMA director Glenn Lowry wanted to bring the project stateside, too, and called a meeting with Baxter. “They had seen it at the Barbican, and they thought it was one of the most important pieces of art in many years,” Friedman says. “I don’t know a lot about art. I didn’t even really understand the significance of the MoMA wanting to show this piece—the first piece we ever bought for our art program. The artists had to tell me, ‘The Barbican’s cool, but the MoMA is the holy grail.’ So we agreed to do it.”

Building on Rain Room’s success, Baxter tapped 15 international curators to set the tone of the RH Contemporary Art platform, which will feature an online gallery; an art journal with contributions from curators, critics, and artists; and a physical gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood—all debuting this November. The gallery, housed in a six-story, 28,000-square-foot building, will open with five concurrent solo exhibitions by emerging artists; works include black-and-white mono-chromes by Peter Demos and sculptural paint-ings by Samantha Thomas. The brand plans to open a gallery in Los Angeles next year and has its sights set on expanding to San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, and London.

“We knew the art world was going to say, ‘What’s a home-furnishing retailer doing in the art world?’” Friedman says. “For us, it seemed like a logical thing to do. We know that a lot of our customers are interested in art, and there’s more square footage on the walls of America’s homes than on the floors.” In fact, Friedman’s strategy at RH has been to treat the couches, dining tables, and décor objects the brand is known for like works of art. “Everything that we curate, we try to put into an environment that will elevate it,” Friedman says. “We want to take the things we believe in and put them on the right stage.”

Since he took over as CEO in 2001, Friedman has transformed RH, once known primarily for retro-inspired novelty knickknacks, into a luxury-design powerhouse. To him, continuing to take risks is essential to staying relevant in retail. Along with RH Contemporary Art, the brand is also entering another new industry: music. With the launch of RH Music this fall, it’s establishing a platform to promote emerg-ing musical talent and collaborations. “Will the music and art we curate resonate with other people? Maybe, maybe not,” Friedman says.

Either way, he believes it’s a risk worth taking. “From the time we’re born, we’re taught to conform to conventional wisdom and thinking,” he says. “You have to step away and not become a victim of your own history.”

(OPPOSITE) Gary Friedman in front of a painting by Natasha Wheat at RH Contemporary Art’s new Chelsea gal-lery. (FOLLOWING SPREAD) Canvas works by Samantha Thomas for the gal-lery’s debut exhibition.

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In 1999, years before the launch of social-networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, the entrepreneur Alex Calderwood built another, more intimate platform for creating connections: a community-minded hotel called the Ace. Calderwood, who had found success running a chain of barbershops, renovated a 28-room flophouse in Seattle’s Belltown area with business partners Wade Weigel and Doug Herrick. They created a hangout with a welcoming-yet-utilitarian feel and affordable rooms. Over the next decade, the Ace reached cult status, expanding to Portland, Palm Springs, and New York, and despite sev-eral road bumps—Weigel and Herrick now are partners only in the Portland and Seattle properties, and another part-ner, Jack Barron, is just involved in Portland—it continues to thrive. This year, Ace Hotel Group is going global: A loca-tion in London’s Shoreditch neighborhood began welcoming guests in September, and outposts in Panama City and L.A. will open by the end of the year. An Ace in Pittsburgh is in the works, too. Surface stopped by the new Ace in London to speak with Calderwood about the bustling brand as it nears its 15th birthday.

Alex CalderwoodINTERVIEW BY SPENCER BAILEY

PORTRAIT BY PAUL PLEWS

What has it been like to bring the Ace brand to London?

There are different facets to that experience. What we do is rooted in humanity. Those core values translate across borders and oceans, and of course there’s nuance and idiosyncrasy between cultures. But I think the core human values translate globally. It’s exciting to take on a new challenge and figure out how to remain true to what you do and who you are in a dif-ferent context.

What have you learned about London that you didn’t know before?

There’s the famous phrase: “two countries separated by a common language.” The ter-minology in the construction world here is dif-ferent than America. It’s been humorous. We’ll

be in meetings, and they’ll make a reference to something, and we’ll be like, “What’s a hoard-ing board? Oh, you mean the construction board!” The funniest one was that, in America, when you finish a floor, you do what’s called a “punch list,” but here they call it a “snake list.”

When you hired Universal Design Studio, the firm had never designed a hotel before. Why’d you choose UDS to do the London hotel with your in-house team, Atelier Ace?

When we look at each of our hotels, we try to look at how a firm is going to respond to the context, whether it’s the city, the specific neighborhood, or the building. I wanted a firm in east London. I asked our team to go through some firms, and Universal Design Studio was one of them. There was something interesting about their work, even though you wouldn’t

(OPPOSITE) Ace Hotel Group co-founder Alex Calderwood at the new Ace hotel in London’s Shoreditch neighborhood.

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look at it and go, “Oh, that’s Ace, for sure.” It’s a different kind of zone, but there was an intelligence in it that I liked.

They showed me some projects, and a couple things stood out. The Tab light by Barber Osgerby [a separate firm founded by UDS partners Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby]—I love it. It’s something I could never tire of. It was interesting that they had that industrial-design skill within the firm. And there was a wall they did for a Mulberry shop that I liked. Basically, the wall was a way to insulate the store based on a natural stone process. It’s a U.K. kind of thing, and they found some old stonemason who knew how to put that together. It was really rooted in English history. When I saw that, I thought, Okay, maybe all their work isn’t exactly what we would do, but there’s something there that tells me we can find a common ground. I just like them. It was a natural fit. It felt right.

How do you typically pick a design firm?

It’s really hard. Previously we did everything ourselves in-house, and then we started work-ing with outside firms—Commune, Roman and Williams, UDS. We’ll also continue to do things completely ourselves. Right now, our team is designing an Ace in Pittsburgh that’ll open in a year and a half, two years. There’s not a formula or a template.

What do the firms you pick have in common?

I think there’s a rigor to the work. They share a real love of craft. They all have an interest in the process—how things are put together—and then try to find opportunities and a narrative in that.

How would you define Ace’s aesthetic?

On a basic level, we keep the color story restricted. In the past, I’ve called it “non-color color.” But who knows, life’s full of contradic-tions, we might change that in the future. I think there’s a kind of materiality that shows up; we like a utilitarian point of view. I wish I had the answer to that question, because if I had that answer, I could put it in a box and sell it.

Do you ever feel like a designer yourself?

I’m creating this vessel, or container, for differ-ent people to do their thing. It’s about bringing the right people together to create something interesting. And we hope that after the hotels open, these are vessels to create some sort of energy. I think that’s my talent: finding inter-esting people and connecting them. When I say “people,” it’s also organizations, firms, vendors, whomever.

It sounds like you’re a people person in the full sense of the term.

That’s maybe not the right way to put it. I think it’s having a gut instinct and being able to follow it. I’m actually not a people person;

I’m incredibly shy. I have a hard time going to public events, because I’m more inward. But I’ve learned through experience how to navigate that.

When you think of a hotelier, you think of someone who’s generally outgoing.

I think it’s sincerity. It’s not just outgoing. There’s something more natural about it.

Many have described the Ace and you as being one. Would you say your personal taste is what comes to the Ace?

A little bit. It’s always been a group effort. When we started Ace, it wasn’t just me—it was myself and Wade [Weigel] and Doug [Herrick], who are still partners in Portland and Seattle, and Jack [Barron], who is still a partner in Portland. We structured a deal where I could move on. But even now, it’s a team effort. If it was all me, it would be one note. Just flat. And that’s why we work with the firms we do. There’s just no way we would do it if it were just one small group of people. I’m not that talented.

How important is design for you in the con-text of the brand?

We’ve never looked at it as design in a really serious sense. It’s more like collecting, more editorial. For us, there’s a willingness to be not exactly perfect, to be more human. I never really look at it as this fully baked complete design. It’s more of an evolution. I look at it more as creating a bit of a foundation, and there’s an eclectic mix of ideas somehow held together by an editorial purpose.

Your next project, the American Trade Hotel in Panama City, opens this November. Why Panama?

As a market, Panama seemed interesting to us. There are a lot of good things happening there. The canal’s widening. The city’s becom-ing a preferred haven for multinationals. It’s also a key jumping-off point for Americans, Europeans, and Asians to get anywhere in South and Central America. These are the busi-ness drivers, but it only really happened after I met [the hotel’s developers], K. C. [Hardin] and Ramón [Arias]. Ramón’s family has been in Panama for years and years, and K. C.’s been there for quite a few years. We weren’t looking actively in Panama; they called us. We spent a little bit of time with them in New York. Then, when we finally went to Panama, I was like, “Wow! This place is amazing!” It really came down to the fact that I like them.

So it wasn’t about experience, but rather—

Intuition. It was from intuition. But it’s intu-ition mixed with market intelligence. If some-one said, “Let’s open a hotel in the middle of the Mojave Desert,” that may not make sense even though intuitively it might. What’s funny

is that I think a lot of Americans don’t recog-nize how easy it is to get to Panama. There are lots of flights from Houston, L.A., New York, Atlanta, Miami. And it runs on the U.S. dollar system. It’s sort of fluid to go there and back.

What do you look for in a city, neighborhood, or building?

The traffic pattern for the city—and what it could be. For example, in L.A., we’re going to be in downtown Los Angeles, which has gotten a lot of attention over the last 10 years. But it seems to me, as an outsider, it’s only been in the last few years that it’s coalescing to what the promise was, or what everyone thought would happen years ago. Now there’s a lot of activity down there. The building is so amazing. It’s got a great story, and it’s aesthetically awesome. But then you look at it in the context of where it’s located. You just start to put this in your head: “What could happen here?” When you think of downtown L.A., there are a couple different pockets. Where the building is, I felt, could be the best corner to define downtown L.A. You’re looking at what it is now and what it potentially could become.

Would you say there’s an “Ace effect” when your hotels come into a neighborhood?

I’ll let you say that. But yeah, there’s some truth to that. Who knows? If it wasn’t us, maybe it would be someone else. I think we do a good job of trying to figure out what’s the right thing at the right time. When we looked at the New York project, I think it was expected we would be on the Lower East Side, or somewhere downtown, which is perfectly great and won-derful. I hang out there all the time. But what was interesting about this project was that it was in a complete non-zone. When you looked at the map of Manhattan with child’s eyes, 29th and Broadway was right in the middle of Manhattan. If you didn’t know Manhattan, you’d be like, “Oh, that’s the perfect location!” We knew that little pocket was a historic dis-trict, so a lot of the buildings would stay. You could see this becoming an interesting zone over a 10-year period. Everyone thought we were crazy when we announced it. What I liked about that project was I knew that even if we were halfway successful, it would create some sort of resonance, some kind of impact, more so than if we went to an expected location.

Why’d you choose Pittsburgh?

It was another people-city kind of thing. Eric Shiner, who’s the curator of the Andy Warhol Museum and used to live in New York, was from Pittsburgh, and moved back to Pittsburgh to work at the museum. He introduced me to these two young developers [Matthew Ciccone and Nate Cunningham] who really have their heart in the right place. They’re very sharp, and they recognize they’ll do well by doing well for the neighborhood. They had bought an old YMCA building, and they were think-ing of making it into apartments. It’s in a zone

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in Pittsburgh called East Liberty. It’s a little bit outside of downtown, but it’s a neighbor-hood that was at one time reported to be one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in America. The YMCA was a civic manifestation of that wealth, and there’s a beautiful church across the street from it.

Spending time in the city, it reminds me of Portland and Seattle 15, 20 years ago. I grew up in Seattle, so I had seen that whole period, watched both cities evolve. We could see the elements there. When we started to add it up in our head, we were like, “Okay, this building is amazing, and the real estate is very affordable in Pittsburgh right now.” And it’s near Carnegie Mellon, near universities—there’s kind of a driver. Google opened one of its largest offices down the street; Microsoft’s opening an office nearby. A lot of people don’t realize Pittsburgh is a leading center for robotics. It could become a Portland of the East Coast. You hear about it all the time: Brooklyn kids are going there and realizing that you can buy a church for $200,000 and live in it and be an artist. You can buy an old tavern if you want to have that lifestyle. You can go start a company. You can go do all these things because the cost of living is affordable, as it was in Portland and Seattle in the ’90s.

Are you looking to cities like Philadelphia?

Philly’s interesting. The Nashvilles, the Memphises, the Charlestons—they all have a different point of view. People don’t real-ize that in hotels it’s not that linear. It’s not that simple. You’ve got to be a little bit fluid and open.

What’s been one of your biggest challenges, and how have you overcome it?

It’s a constant challenge finding the right mix of team members and having a sense of when you’re pushing too much or not enough. I think the key challenge for any kind of busi-ness—and certainly this one—is always just people. Finding the right people, motivat-ing, inspiring, figuring out the idiosyncrasies is part of humanity. Everyone has his or her own quirks. We acknowledge that. We figure out how we can make it work for everybody.

In that sense, you’re sort of a designer. You’re designing your brand.

Yeah. It’s like being a chef: What ingredients do you have in the refrigerator? What are you going to do with that?

A suite with vintage furniture at the recently opened Ace hotel in London.

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Italy, furniture maker Poltrona Frau celebrates its history, showcasing seminal pieces and the evolution of taste.

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A photo portfolio of recent events in the Surface universe, including the opening of a Stuart Weitzman store designed by Zaha Hadid.

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Italian designer Michele De Lucchi on creating the exhibition spaces for the new Poltrona Frau Museum in Tolentino, Italy:

I’ve known Poltrona Frau for decades, and I’ve designed products for the company for 20, maybe 30 years. I know its philosophy. Poltrona Frau celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2012, and we started to discuss the possibilities of a museum two or three years before that. Mainly, the idea of the museum was to attach the history of the company to its products, some of which have now become icons.

First we went looking for a location. One of the initial ideas was to rent out a castle near the factory in Tolentino, but we felt it wasn’t the right environment in which to shelter the pieces. We ultimately decided we could build the museum inside the company factory. This was, at first, quite strange for everybody. In the end, though, we thought it was the right thing to do, because the workers, the artisans, and the craftsmen—everybody—in some way could be touched by the story of the company, and be proud to be a part of the Poltrona Frau community.

When we decided to do the museum inside the factory, I realized that I had the opportunity to design a kind of theater. It was an interior that’s very impersonal, a loud space with a high ceiling. The main problem was how to place a museum within this impersonal site—to create a space that can offer the visitor a sense of astonishment or surprise, and a good atmosphere to sit in. The aim was not to create a manufacturing environment but a cultural environment.

We divided the space into six different “chapters.” Each chapter covers a time period: You begin in 1912, when the company started, through the ’20s, then move on to the ’30s, and so on. For each decade, we selected at least one Poltrona Frau piece. We were able to create a kind of history, not only of Poltrona Frau, but also of the development of taste in the last century. That was the real surprise of the museum: Viewers realize that this is a museum of Poltrona Frau, but also a museum of the evolution of taste, decade after decade.

This museum was, in some ways, very worrying to me, because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to understand the right spirit required to design a company museum. You risk turning a company museum into something like a showroom, into a commercial exhibition more than a cultural exhibition. I wanted to design something hidden inside a factory that’s not commercial at all, but rather a carefully crafted experience for the visitor.

Ultimately, it was built on the idea that if you go inside a museum, even if you’re inside a factory, you have to feel a sense of contemplation, a sense of looking for something better—a sense of looking at and admiring something. You have to cultivate intellectual curiosity, not a willingness to buy. It’s very essential to have a sense of tranquility. I wanted to keep stress outside and set a different mood. I wanted visitors to enter this museum with the right spirit. —As told to Spencer Bailey

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The entrance of the Poltrona Frau Museum.

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Poltrona Frau Vanity Fair chair (1930). Nine video totems displaying words and images from the technical glossary of Poltrona Frau. Wall pattern with overlapping pieces of Poltrona Frau leather.

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Ginger chair (2011) by Roberto Lazzeroni, Aster X chair (2005) by Jean-Marie Massaud, and Oceano trunk (2007) by Andrée Putman, all Poltrona Frau. Mercury light (2007) by Ross Lovegrove for Artemide.

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Poltrona Frau Lullaby Due bed (1968) by Luigi Massoni. Mod 2097 chandelier (1958) by Gino Sarfatti for Flos.

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Poltrona Frau Juliet chair (2012) by Benjamin Hubert, part of the Icon collection. Giò light (2010) by Angeletti Ruzza Design for Nemo.

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Lyra chair (1934) from the Poltrona Frau archives and part of the company’s Icon collection. Custom light by Michele De Lucchi.

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Miu Miu Women’s Tales dinnerMiuccia Prada (right) hosted a dinner on Aug. 29 with friends including photographer Bruce Weber (middle) and Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani (left) to celebrate screenings of “The Door” by Ava Duvernay and “Le Donne della Vucciria” by Hiam Abbass. The

films were two of six commissioned for the Miu Miu Women’s Tales series at this year’s Venice International Film Festival. Though each has its own storyline, all six share two common points: a female director and cos-tumes by Miu Miu. (Photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images for Miu Miu)

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“Peter Lindbergh” opening hosted by Vladimir Restoin RoitfeldOn Sept. 7, art dealer and curator Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld hosted the opening of an exhibition of fash-ion photographer Peter Lindbergh’s black-and-white images. The event was held on New York’s Upper East

Side; a recording by poet Forrest Gander played while guests, including model Linda Evangelista and for-mer Vogue fashion director Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele (right, with Lindbergh), admired the prints. (Photo: Getty Images)

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Calvin Klein Collection spring/summer 2014 after-partyCelebrations were in order on Sept. 12 for Calvin Klein Collection, which gathered guests at Spring Studios in New York to toast creative director of womenswear Francisco Costa’s spring/summer 2014 collection and the launch of a new fragrance, Downtown Calvin Klein. The

event coincided with Costa’s 10th anniversary at the com-pany. From left to right, Costa, model Dree Hemingway, restaurateur Phil Winser, and creative director for mens-wear Italo Zucchelli. (Photo: Billy Farrell/BFAnyc.com)

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Opening of “Sheep Station” by François-Xavier Lalanne at Getty StationOn Sept. 16, a private dinner hosted by real-estate broker Michael Shvo and Paul Kasmin Gallery brought art-world insiders, including collector Robbie Antonio and pho-tographer Todd Eberle, to preview “Sheep Station” by

François-Xavier Lalanne—the inaugural exhibition of the Getty Station public-art program. Sculptor Claude Lalanne (the artist’s wife, above) and others admired the stone-and-bronze sheep sculptures. (Photo: Neil Rasmus/BFAnyc.com)

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3M Architectural Markets dinner with Todd BracherOn Sept. 18, during the London Design Festival, 3M Architectural Markets and New York–based designer Todd Bracher (above) celebrated the LED-powered Lightfalls sconce, the Minnesota-based company’s first lighting fixture. (The light debuted at Wanted Design fair

during New York Design Week in 2012.) Guests including Surface executive editor Spencer Bailey and the design gallerist Libby Sellers gathered for a private dinner at the Elms Lesters painting rooms, surrounded by an installa-tion using Bracher’s design. (Photo: Felix Kunze)

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Surface Design Dialogues No. 3 at Mandarin Oriental Las VegasOn Aug. 19, Surface and Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas hosted the third installment of Design Dialogues. Executive editor Spencer Bailey moderated a discus-sion between designers Sami Hayek (middle) and Joe

Doucet (right) on modern-day Las Vegas’s relationship to luxury and design. A tasting presented by French chef Pierre Gagnaire, who runs Twist, the hotel’s restaurant, followed the conversation. (Photo: Jamey Kirklin and Greg Warden)

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Stuart Weitzman Milan flagship openingThe new Stuart Weitzman flagship in Milan, designed by Zaha Hadid, opened on Sept. 19 with a celebra-tion during Milan Fashion Week. Attendees including Weitzman (left, with the face of the brand’s fall cam-paign, Kate Moss), DJ and model Mary Charteris, and

Vogue Japan editor-at-large Anna Dello Russo mingled outside the store amid topiaries shaped like giant high heels. (Photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images for Stuart Weitzman)

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André Saraiva’s “Back to Sweden” celebrationDuring Swedish Fashion Week, nightclub impresa-rio André Saraiva hosted a two-day celebration that included the opening of “Back to Sweden,” an exhibition of his graffiti work at Gallery Steinsland Berliner. Also on the bill was a private dinner hosted by Absolut on Aug.

26, plus parties at a pop-up version of Saraiva’s popular nightclub chain Le Baron. Guests including actor and designer Waris Ahluwalia (left, with Le Baron’s Dani Morla) reveled at the temporary club. (Photo: Anh Phi/Forward)

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FRAME BAG BY THE NUMBERS:

6 Materialsused23 Individualpieces4.5 Hoursspentinproduction,fromstarttofinish3,000 Squareinchesofmaterial7 Linearyardsofnylonwebbing4,858 Stitches1,388 Inchesofthread15 Workersrequiredtomakeeachbag39 Averagenumberofminutesspentmarking

andconstructingwebbingframe6 Averagenumberofminutesspentattaching

eachframecornertothebaseofthebag8 Machinesusedtoconstructthebag,including

anautomatedstraight-stitchneedlefeed,aroboticcuttingtable,anda20-tonhydro-pneumaticpress

128 Chalkmarksmadebyhandbeforecutting

Grcic’s Web

This fall, Maharam launches a line of bags—the American textile brand’s first—including the Frame (above) by Munich-based designer Konstantin Grcic.

OBJECT

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The Global Forum for DesignDecember �– �, ��Preview Day / December �, ��

Design Galleries/Antonella Villanova / Florence, Carpenters Workshop Gallery / London & Paris, Casati Gallery / Chicago, Cristina Grajales Gallery / New York,Demisch Danant / New York, Didier Ltd / London, Erastudio Apartment-Gallery / Milan, Fine Art Silver / Brussels, Gabrielle Ammann // Gallery/ Cologne, Galerie BSL – Béatrice Saint Laurent / Paris, Galerie Downtown – François Laffanour / Paris, Galerie Jacques Lacoste / Paris, Galerie kreo / Paris, Galerie Maria Wettergren / Paris, Galerie Patrick Seguin / Paris, Gallery SEOMI / Seoul & Los Angeles, Hostler Burrows / New York, Jason Jacques Inc / New York, Jousse Entreprise / Paris, Louisa Guinness Gallery / London, Magen H Gallery / New York, Mark McDonald / Hudson, Moderne Gallery / Philadelphia, Ornamentum / Hudson, Pierre Marie Giraud / Brussels, Priveekollektie Contemporary Art + Design / Heusden aan de Maas, R 20th Century / New York, Sebastian + Barquet / New York, Victor Hunt Designart Dealer / Brussels

Design On/Site Galleries/ArtFactum Gallery / Beirut presenting Marc Baroud & Marc Dibeh, Caroline Van Hoek / Brussels presenting Gijs Bakker, Elisabetta Cipriani / London presenting Carlos Cruz-Diez, Industry Gallery / Washington DC & Los Angeles presenting Benjamin Rollins Caldwell, Volume Gallery / Chicago presenting Jonathan Muecke, Wonderglass / London presenting Nao Tamura

Meridian Avenue & 19th Street / Miami Beach / USA

designmiami.com

Documents

SURFACE - JULIAN SCHNABEL - NOVEMBER 2013