Sorry we were a little late posting. Blame it on Mercury Retrograde. Full coverage of NeoCon might not happen until I’m back in New York, because I lost a day due to technical difficulties, and now have appointments to keep. But I will tell you this–NeoCon is jumping, despite tornadoes, four dollar-a-gallon gas,and a gloomy economy. In fact, we’d heard that a lot of design companies had scaled back on their showroom displays . But there is lots new to see, and happily there isn’t the preponderance of giveaway/throwaways gifts of past years. Is this due to the recession or a new eco-consciousness? Who knows? What follows is a survey of the best of what we’ve seen, mostly in the order that we’ve seen it.

One of the first things we saw, and most exciting, was Kimball’s new HUM office system, designed for “individual focus, collaborative effort, and everything in between.” Kimball has tagged the system “Minds at Work,” and it seems a fitting name. The work surfaces are convex, so the each individual’s desk system can height adjusted and so independent from the “huddle areas.”

There are various types of “terraces” for “parking” papers, files and personal accessories, all at different levels so that they can be shared or kept private. Another intriguing feature is the “touchdown” section at the end of each table for meeting with a visitor or catching up on a project with a team mate. Perhaps the coolest part are the lively cutout “see me” screens, which filter distractions without isolating individuals.

Kimball's new HUM

Koncept has created a new version of their award-winning task lamp using an improved LED technology.It comes in two sizes and is highly affordable–under $200. Below is the smaller size. These four little LEDs give a light almost comparable to incandescent.

At the booth for the Italian Ceramic Tile Commission we were amazed at the new advances in ceramic tile technologies. Numbered tiles seemed to be a trend.

We saw the SOM-designed Corian dining pod featured in Fulcrum’s Material Evidence section at where else? The Corian booth. If you haven’t read the piece, it explains how the pod was made.

At the Maharam booth, we saw Hella Jongerius’s Layers fabric collection, which is also featured in our debut issue. Check out the section Rollout. It’s much more stunning in real life. The photograph we featured doesn’t show off the depth of the layers.

The picture below is oddly angled, I know, but at least you see how cool the Dutch design Claudy Jongstra’s Drenth Heath in this new sea blue color. Who else but Maharam would offer this marvelous, utterly eccentric artisanal creation as a “textile.” What makes it so lush, lustrous and dimensional? Raw tufts of fleece meshed with a wool/silk face. I’d love to see it in a residential application, as an upholstery for a sofa perhaps. Luisa Cevese’s remarkable fabric Ply features embedded textile remnants in a soft polyurethane and it is especially striking in black.

Joel Berman Glass Studios introduced “Unity” a series of patterns on glass inspired by the contemplative art of Islam. I believe the studio uses a silkscreen technology. Beautiful.

A new company, at least to us, OFS based somewhere in the Carolinas offered a surprisingly contemporary bench. The company seems determined to push traditional wood furniture in more contemporary directions.

A sleek upholstered chair from the same company.

Healthcare is a big field for contract furniture manufacturers, as you probably know. But did you know there is a specialty field known as bariatrics? If you’re not familiar with the term,

it refers to medicine focused on the care and treatment of obesity. Considering that obesity is an epidemic in this country, it’s something of a growth field. Forgive the pun. Here’s some surprisingly attractive furniture from KI which caters to this audience. It’s known as the Arissa Collection. You can even imagine it in people’s homes.

Here’s the rest of the collection.

Almost all the furniture manufacturers at NeoCon marketed themselves as “eco-friendly.” And

featured green details in their showroom designs. One of the most handsome was the repurposed wood flooring at Gunlocke.

A clean-lined, but otherwise undistinguished sofa at Gunlocke became aquite intriguing

when upholstered in one of Hella Jongerius’s Layers fabrics for Maharam.

Can’t afford an original Jean Prouvé? Gunlocke offers room dividers based on

one of the French master’s designs.

In January, Knoll reissued its N19 Straight Chair and N 10 Splay-Leg Table that George Nakashima designed for the company in 1948, which the company produced until 1954. Here it is featured against a Knoll wallcovering called, “Pause” designed by Georgie Stout of 2×4,

the firm which designed Fulcrum.

Knoll Textiles introduced a new collection, called Knoll Luxe, which as its name

suggests features high-end fabrics for special, executive applications. It’s beautiful

and sumptuous, and very much influenced by fashion trends. I especially loved the embroidered fabric, which is handmade in India.

One of the most intriguing showrooms was Coalesse. The collection unifies the finest attributes of three well-regarded contract brands–Brayton, Metro, and Vecta–in one solution for live/work environments. These pieces definitely make the office more inviting and cozy, but

I don’t think it makes up for routine late hours. What does, save maybe a much bigger paycheck?

Among the furnishings in the Coalesse Collection are the Holy Day Lounge Chair and tables

by Jean Marie Massaud—sleek and comfortable.

Marc Krusin works mostly with European manufacturers, but now that his Wrapp chair for Viccarbe is part of the Coalesse Collection, he is sure to get more attention here.

Coalesse’s casegoods pieces are especially handsome. The pr person explained

what made them so special, and who designed them, but I’m writing this several days

later and fear I can remember any of the details. What I can say is that they are

extremely high quality.

These little table-stools conceived for lobby areas are also from Coalesse.

That’s a sampling of some of the best seen at NeoCon. We’ll be doing stories on other

products introduced at the show in future issues of Fulcrum.

Fulcrum interviewed Stephen Burks by BlackBerry shortly after he returned from the Milan Furniture Fair. His comments about the furnishings he launched there and the other designs and people he saw give insight into the life and thoughts of a rising product designer.

At the Milan Furniture Fair this spring, Cappellini and Modus introduced new furnishings by you. Tell Fulcrum about the designs and how they came about.

The Cappellini Love Mache tables are based on a concept I had for recycling all the piles of magazines I had lying around, mostly old copies of Domus and Wallpaper, which I figured would make great raw material for something. Mache is a reinvention of the traditional papier-mâché technique, combining shredded magazines with nontoxic adhesives and hardeners, making them eco-friendly. These Mache tables are prototypes. Cappellini plans to have South African artisans produce them.

The Cappellini Love Mache collection emerged out of Stephen Burks's passionate commitment to the environment and to struggling artisans in the developing world.

The initial prototypes were produced and shown for the first time at the Stockholm Furniture Fair in February in collaboration with the students at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts & Design. I’d done a Domestic Recycling workshop there last fall, and the students were happy to help out when I returned with my Craft Café project. By coincidence, Giulio Cappellini was the guest of honor at the fair. Giulio and I had been having discussions for almost a year about collaborating on a more eco-conscious project for Cappellini, but couldn’t manage to meet until Stockholm. He loved some of the prototypes for the Mache collection, and Cappellini Love Mache was born!

As the name suggests, the Cappellini Love Mache table is based on the technique of papier mache. It is made out of a paper structure, stuffed with paper, and then covered with shredded magazines. Nontoxic adhesives and hardeners are used throughout. The Mache process will be taught to artisans in South Africa, who will produce the pieces for Cappellini.

What’s distinctive about your project for Modus?

The Pleats sofa is another artisanal project. I’ve always had difficulty designing seating because it’s so hard to find an innovative point of entry. With the brief to design a new sofa from Modus, I considered not the shape or form but the surface of the sofa. I wanted to develop a more sensuous experience. When I pitched the idea of custom pleating the upholstery for the sofa, Modus said impossible! But then by chance they found a Scottish kilt company that stitches every pleat by hand with specialized machines. We plan to extend the collection to a pleated lounge chair and explore the use of other materials.

What for you were some of the fair’s highlights?

Massimiliano Busnelli, the grandson of the founder of B&B Italia, showed me the company’s new pieces by Jean-Marie Massaud. His new Seven table and iconic Terminal I day bed are beautiful additions to the company’s collection. The advanced molded plastic shell and urethane foam seat were specifically engineered for the piece. What else? I met Nendo’s Oki Sato and Akhiro Ito at the Tod’s opening party, where we were guests of honor with Giulio Cappellini. Several of Cappellini’s designers, including the Nendo collective and I, have been invited to make window display concepts for the new “Looking at Tod’s” project. My window display will be shown in all of the Tod’s flagship stores this summer.

Stephen Burks's Pleats sofa for Modus features a pleated surface that was sewn by expert technicians in a Scottish kilt factory. He admits to having a hard time finding an innovative point of entry when it comes to seating. So here he focused on the surface, in order to develop a more sensuous sitting experience.

What are your main inspirations?

Traveling has really opened my eyes to other ways of working and looking at design, what we’re making, for whom and why.

So all this globetrotting has affected your designing?

Yes. Lately, I’ve been enjoying watching all of the different aspects of what we do influence each other—a textile collection in India inspires a new chair for B&B Italia or a Domestic Recycling workshop in Stockholm becomes a collection of handmade furniture for Cappellini. I really feel a new aesthetic coming to the foreground that values the hand much more than the machine. Design, I believe, can really be a transformative tool in extending artisanal traditions into the future.

Which of your designs do you consider most representative of your thinking and why?

My thinking is always changing, and so my work is too. I’m always most excited by where I’m at today, which keeps the future wide open : )

Some Facts about Stephen Burks: He studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, prodcut design at the Institute of Design and attended Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He established his design firm, Readymade Projects, in 2003. It has produced products for Artecnica, B & B Italia, Boffi, Calvin Klein, Cappellini and Missoni. He has worked with Aid to Artisans and the Nature Conservancy to create sustainable design in the developing world.

www.bnodesign.com

www.mrarch.com

www.oppenoffice.com

www.shoparc.com

www.work.ac

Office Space

David Mann, MR Architecture and Design

Changing space has always been important. In the beginning, it would be perfect, then we’d outgrow it. And when things got cramped, it was bad for interviewing—we looked like a sweatshop. As soon as I felt like we weren’t hiring the people we needed to be, I’d consider moving.

Amale Andraos, Work A/C

After our last move, the level of energy was insane. Nobody would leave before 10—we had all this space, there was more sharing between designers. As architects, we’re supposed to believe that space impacts one’s psychology … and it does. The overhead is a real killer—it’s not easy, but it really energizes the office.

Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, BNOdesign

When your office is a larger footprint, with a conference room, etc., you can attract larger projects. One reason we’re doing hotel work is that it looks like we can. We have the space, staff and publicity for larger projects.

Projects and Staffing

Chris Sharples, SHoP Architects

We try not to hire for a (specific) project. It’s important to have people who understand how we work. You can’t have someone who doesn’t understand start on a project, then expect them to perform.

Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, BNOdesign

A 6-person design staff can produce 30 projects, because they’re usually in different phases. We try to stagger projects so they’re not all on the same schedule.

Chad Oppenheim, Oppenheim Architecture

Managing workload versus staff is the hardest thing. The smartest thing we’ve done is not to hire more people than we’ve needed at any one point.

David Mann, MR Architecture and Design

At times we felt we didn’t have enough people in the right places, but we’ve never let that be a factor. Even at the very beginning, I took on projects and ended up with what seemed like too much to handle, but I always got it done. That’s what we do now—get the work, then figure out how you do it. You can always hire outside consultants if you don’t have the expertise.

Publicity

Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, BNOdesign

I’ve found that editors like to talk to designers more than a rep. It’s more informal, and easier for them to get what they’re looking for. Never underestimate the power of … knowing editors, photographing and sending your work. People keep clippings and names, so getting published and keeping editors happy makes a big difference

Chris Sharples, SHoP Architects

In general we’re not actually out and advertising. It’s working with top designers and good clients (that gets us work). Other architects, zoning attorneys—they also refer you.

Dan Wood, Work A/C

We’re lucky to work in New York—there’s so much press here, and social circles overlap a lot. We often meet people writing about architecture, so a lot happens on a social level. And we just hired an office manager who can handle a lot of (those calls).

Attitude

Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, BNOdesign

You just have to jump in with projects. We took on (our first hotel) even though I thought we couldn’t do it. In the end, it didn’t materialize, but we got great exposure, great connections, and we learned how to produce a hotel.

Chad Oppenheim, Oppenheim Architecture

We try to be daring and conservative at the same time. We take on big risks and projects, hundreds of millions of dollars, but treat things seriously and respectfully. That’s what gives clients comfort.

Amale Andraos, Work A/C

Our strategy: say ‘yes’ to everything. You just try to be careful. When you’re small, you can go under very fast. We’ve tried to keep close track of things.

David Mann, MR Architecture and Design

It’s hard for anyone else to really represent you out there. They’re not going to have the integrity or the voice that you have. It’s all about the direct relationships you build with your employees, your clients and the press. Word-of-mouth has been really important to our growth—nine-tenths of it.

David Mann, MR Architecture and Design

The smartest thing I’ve done is always feeling hungry, never settling in or feeling successful and thinking I can rest. I’m very tired sometimes (chuckle), but it keeps us growing.

The Firms

BNOdesign

Principal: Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz
Est.: 1992 – 1 person
Today: – 11 Moved: 3x
Current Big Project: Mondrian SoHo Hotel

MR Architecture and Design

Principal: David Mann
Est.: 1996 – 2 people
Today: 25 Moved: 4x
Current Big Project: Interiors of a new Greenwich Village Condo Building

Oppenheim Architecture

Principal: Chad Oppenheim
Est.: 1999 – 1 full-time, 1 moonlighter
Today: 35 Moved: 2x Current Big Project: One Hotel, Washington D.C.

SHoP Architects

Principals: Chris Sharples, Coren Sharples, William Sharples, Kimberly Holden, Gregg Pasquarelli
Est.: 1996 – 5 people
Today: 75
Moved: 2x
Current Big Project: East River Master Plan

Work A/C

Amale Andraos and Dan Wood
Est.: 2003 – 2 people Today: 15
Moved: 3x
Current Big Project: 5,500sq. ft. apartment renovation in Tribeca

Don’t Just Write a Contract, Get it Signed!

When a designer comes to C. Jaye Berger, a Manhattan attorney, to find out how to get a deadbeat client to pay up, she asks if there’s a contract. Often, the answer is: “There is one, but we never got around to signing it,” which doesn’t bode well for the beleaguered designer. To win a breach of contract suit in most states, you have to have a signed agreement. An unsigned contract is nothing more than a record—and an ambiguous one at that—of what the parties thought they might agree to.

Berger, though, understands why contracts too often remain unsigned. What happens, she says, is that the contract negotiation gets bogged down in minutiae. The client’s attorney may have pages and pages of comments on the proposed terms, which require detailed responses; meanwhile, the client is pushing the designer to begin work. (And most designers, to their credit, would rather design than talk about the language of an arbitration clause.) But if one or both parties don’t want to sign the contract, Ms. Berger said, it may be an indication of an underlying problem in the nascent designer-client relationship. “It’s like the fear of commitment. Something is bothering someone.”

Simplify Billing

Abigail Shachat, an architectural designer, knows what that something may be. In too many cases, she says, the client wants to know the total cost of a job before signing the contract. Indeed, clients often ask Shachat to agree, in writing, that her fee will not exceed a given figure. But she avoids “not to exceed” clauses, for a reason most designers can relate to: “There’s one great unknown in a job,” she says, “and that’s the client.” Some clients change their minds incessantly, which is okay with Shachat (“I’m very patient”)—as long as she isn’t expected to foot the bill.

To make sure she is compensated fairly, Shachat nearly always bills by the hour, rather than as a percentage of the project cost. A straight hourly fee means there doesn’t have to be a “change order” when the project, inevitably, expands. That’s a big advantage, Shachat says, “since the process of designing is organic. If you have to stop to have a discussion every time you exceed the original scope of work, it impedes that natural process.” And there’s another reason this award-winning designer prefers charging by the hour: If she were getting a percentage of the project cost, she might find herself thinking about how much she could make by pushing a particularly expensive antique, or by cramming a lot of furniture into a room. She prefers to specify just the right piece, no matter how much—or how little—it costs. “I want to be a designer, not a furniture salesman,” Shachat says.

Shachat may not want to be a furniture salesman, but she is a part-time furniture designer; she often creates custom pieces for her clients. Are the designs worth trying to protect? There are three branches of intellectual property law—trademark, copyright, and patent—and none is an especially good fit for furniture. Unless you’ve designed the next Oh chair (Karim Rashid’s uniquely formed plastic ubiquity)—and a manufacturer is preparing to sell millions of them—trying to protect your design may be expensive and frustratingly ineffective.

Justice Is Expensive

If, someday, someone “quotes” your design, you can declare that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and look the other way. That’s how the founders of Scrapile, a Brooklyn design firm known for case goods made from laminated layers of recycled wood, handled a possible knock-off. Last year, they discovered that 4Korners, another Brooklyn firm, had created a table and chest that closely resembled theirs. A design blog, Inhabitat, ran photos of the pieces side-by-side, and fans of Scrapile posted one outraged comment after another. But Scrapile’s founders, Bart Bettencourt and Carlos Salgado, had not patented the laminating process, and did not regret it—since their goal was to encourage other artisans to reuse scraps. “Scrapile has always been a labor of love,” Bettencourt responded on the blog, “and to me that is the sweetest validation.”

Some cases, however, are too blatant for Bettencourt’s Gandhi-esque approach. In 1994, designer Nancy Corzine, founder of the high-end furniture company that bears her name, discovered that a Florida firm was copying items like her Napoleon lounge chairs and Harlow vanity table. The showroom, Turner Greenberg Associates, wasn’t just paying homage to Corzine, it was openly trading on her name. Turner Greenberg had in fact copied pages from Corzine’s catalogue and even used her numbering system for its counterfeit products. So when Corzine sued, she had an unusually strong case. Ten years later, a federal district judge ruled that Turner Greenberg was liable for “trademark infringement, unfair competition, false designation of origin and palming off.” But that was only after Corzine had racked up more than $1 million in legal fees. Which proves two things: Protecting original designs is tricky, and you’d make a lot more money as a lawyer.

A sudden spate of major commissions around the world belies Asymptote’s long, circuitous route to ascendancy. A look at some of the milestones on the firm’s path from bytes to buildings.

Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid

Arrival in the New World - 1967
The Rashid family emigrates from England to the “new world” of Canada. Upon arrival they visit Montreal’s Expo ’67. “Buckminster Fuller’s 20-story-tall geodesic dome, linked by an elevated monorail with the other pavilions, was the most futuristic skyline ever seen,” Hani Rashid recalls. “That’s where Karim [Rashid’s younger brother] and I thought we were going to live.” Instead, the Rashids move to suburban Toronto. “What we’re both trying to do is make a correction. We really believe in a powerful, poetic, magical future.”

Fateful Encounter - 1983

Rashid meets Couture during registration at Carleton University.

Futurism’s Protégé - 1986
Rashid collaborates with his former Cranbrook professor Daniel Libeskind on “The House Without Chairs” for the 1986 Milan Triennale.

Sculpture’s Disciple - 1986
At the Yale School of Architecture, Frank Gehry, who was still a maverick, and not yet a star, becomes Couture’s mentor.

Renaissance Moment - 1987
In Milan Rashid forms a collaborative with artists, theorists, and technologists. Although short-lived, the experience is formative. Couture joins him, and Asymptote is born. The name is chosen because, says Rashid, it stands “for trajectory and possibility, as opposed to certainty and closure.”

First Break - 1988
Shortly after moving to New York City in 1988, the studio wins an international competition for a gateway for Los Angeles. Its “Steel Cloud” proposal is radical and attention-getting: a four-block-long, bridgelike superstructure in glass and steel spanning the Hollywood Freeway and supporting several movie screens, a glass aquarium and a “forest” of sound synthesizers. It’s never built.

Images Expo ‘67, National Archives of Canada. All other images courtesy of Asymptote.

Pace Set - 1989-90
Three weeks after winning the L.A. gateway competition, Asymptote designs a proposal for the Alexandria Library, setting the studio’s high standards and pace. The entry places third in a field of 1,200 competitors.

Near Misses - 1991-95
The early 1990s are spent working on international competitions, some of which Asymptote wins, but they ultimately fall through. Nevertheless, Rashid believes, “those years were seminal for us. We were able to cut our teeth on various large-scale projects, and really began to understand how politics and economies need to be met head on as well as cutting-edge design and innovation. . . nothing was wasted.”

First Building (Kind of) - 1997

Asymptote wins a competition to design the Univers Theater for the Danish city of Aarhus’s theater festival. A work of striking modernity in a historic town square, it becomes the symbol of the festival.

Theory Becomes Practice - 1998
The New York Stock Exchange commissions Asymptote to design a virtual environment to facilitate the assessment and navigation of its daily deluge of data. Meanwhile, the Bohen Foundation selects the studio to build a virtual Guggenheim Museum. The scheme uncoils the museum’s fabled spiral mass. Amorphic in nature, the digitized museum is dubbed “blob architecture” by critics. Asymptote is not amused.

Workscape Reimagined - 2000
To replace the outmoded office cubicle, Asymptote designs Knoll A3, drawing inspiration from sports and fashion. A fresh, colorful, exceedingly flexible workstation system, it’s assembled from a variety of innovative components.

Images Knoll A3, Ramak Fazel; all other images courtesy of Asymptote.

Floating World - 2002
For another competition in Haarlemmermeer, the Netherlands, Asymptote draws on notions from 17th-century waterworks and follies to design a floating pavilion that is its own water feature, called the Hydra Pier. The water rushing over the pavilion’s mass makes the building appear at once dematerialized and computer-generated. Virtual architecture morphs into reality. Critics go wild.

My Dinner with Alberto - 2003
Architect Greg Lynn invites Rashid to a dinner with Alberto Alessi, who doesn’t show interest in Rashid until he mentions he was a friend of the late post-modern pioneer Aldo Rossi, who designed the celebrated La Conica espresso pot for Alessi. Two years later, Alessi commissions Asymptote to design the first Alessi retail store in the United States. The SoHo store becomes a design destination.

Bonanza - 2006
In Dubai for a conference, Rashid meets a developer who commissions him to design the tallest residential tower in Abu Dhabi. Later, New York developer Ira Drukier walks into Asymptote’s office, announcing it’s time for the firm to build in the city. He commissions a luxury condo at 166 Perry Street, next to a Richard Meier glass tower in the far West Village.

Starchitecture Status - 2007
Blackberry chooses Couture as a spokesperson for its print ad campaign. Asymptote unveils its design for the Penang Global City Center.

Dreams Materialized - 2008
Asymptote has a staff of 60. Its first New York City project, 166 Perry, will be completed this year.

Images Asymptote

History repeats itself? Perhaps not literally, but certain places do seem to have a curious resonance. Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, located behind Carrère & Hastings’s celebrated New York Public Library is just such a one. Two hundred years ago the site was a Native American hunting ground. It then became a potter’s field and next an enclosed park, when the imposing Croton Reservoir occupied the library’s site. In 1853 the Crystal Palace Exhibition, New York’s first world’s fair, was held there. A cutting-edge iron-and-glass structure, the Crystal Palace was a marvel of lightweight engineering, destroyed by fire in 1858.

Gone but not forgotten, that daring building became the inspiration for Cook + Fox Architects when the New York-based firm was awarded the commission in 2003 to design the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park, a joint venture of the Durst Organization and the financial institution, the building’s major tenant. The selection of Cook + Fox was not surprising. Douglas Durst had already worked with one of the firm’s principals, Robert Fox Jr., when he was a principal at Fox & Fowle, on Four Times Square, the world’s first speculative green office tower.

Douglas Durst is something of an anomaly among New York real estate developers. Under his leadership the family-owned Durst Organization has been a determined promoter of sustainable development for decades. The company undertook the development of Four Times Square in 1995 with the goal of demonstrating that environmentally responsible architecture was economically viable for office high rises. The project included many state-of-the-art energy-saving and life-quality–enhancing technologies not previously applied to tower construction: building-integrated photovoltaic panels and fuel cells to supplement energy needs; curtain wall with superior shading and insulating performance; gas-fired absorption chiller-heaters; and an air-delivery system providing 50 percent more fresh air than required by code.

Yet while Four Times Square was ahead of its time and duly lauded, it didn’t immediately spark a movement for green tower construction in the city. For one thing, these fancy new technologies didn’t perform as well as had been hoped. As Donald Winston, Durst’s director of technical services, confesses, “There was no way to make a significant dent in a skyscraper’s energy consumption with PV panels, given the lack of horizontal surfaces on which to mount them.” As for the fuel cells, the building broke even “on an energy-cost basis, but there was no payback on the capital cost,” says Winston. “The problem wasn’t so much that they don’t work at skyscraper scale, more that they are so space- and maintenance-intensive that other options are a much better choice.”

According to Appel, the team began by considering how the elements—sun, earth, wind, water—might be drawn upon as “free sources of energy.”

Despite these disappointments, Four Times Square did set the stage for change, at the very least providing feedback on how these environmentally advanced technologies fared when applied to high-rise construction. More research and development led to more sophisticated solutions. “Today there are 15 green towers now under construction or recently completed in New York City,” says Rick Cook, the co-principal of Cook + Fox. “We’ve come a tremendous distance in the past two years. We’ve gone beyond the tipping point.”

As an architectural firm committed to environmental intelligence, Cook + Fox goes about conceiving what they term “high-performance buildings” using a thinking process very different from that of a conventional architecture firm. The team begins by considering how the elements—sun, earth, wind, water—might be drawn upon as “free sources of energy,” according to Serge Appel, an associate partner at Cook + Fox. The link between these sustainable energy sources and the project’s scale can be problematic. In the case of One Bryant Park, “first we looked at using photovoltaic panels to store sunlight and convert it to energy,” says Appel. “This strategy was rejected early, when it became apparent that in order to meet the demands of a 54-story, two-million square-foot structure, the entire building would have to be covered in PV panels.”

The next source with potential was the earth. Geothermal power can be used to supply heat, cooling, and electricity, but its viability depends on the geology of the region. A geothermal system at One Bryant Park would require drilling 1,500 feet into bedrock, which would have been prohibitively expensive. The firm also considered the wind. It too was problematic because in New York, the wind velocity varies considerably, and the current state of wind-energy technology requires consistent wind cycles. Should the technology become more sophisticated, however, the roof of the tower has been engineered to support the weight of a wind turbine.

Finally, the architects turned to water. There was no feasible way to use water to actually power the building, but rain could be utilized as gray water in various systems within the building, such as sanitation. In so doing, the building would be conserving a precious resource—potable water—while reducing stress on the city’s already overburdened sewer and storm-water systems. Presently when there are downpours, the city’s only method for preventing backup is to discharge raw sewage and polluted storm water directly into the city’s rivers, and so, the Atlantic Ocean. By having One Bryant Park collect and store this water in a cascading series of large tanks, it is predicted that it will reduce the amount of water typically sent into the sewer system from a building of its size by 95 percent. In this way the addition of another 2 million square feet of office space will actually have a regenerative effect on New York’s urban ecology.

Rising 945 feet on the Avenue of the Americas, one block east of Times Square, the Bank of America Tower’s translucent, faceted form was inspired by the iron-and-glass Crystal Palace that occupied Bryant Park (foreground) as the centerpiece for New York’s first world’s fair in 1853. Covering two acres, it’s the largest development site in Midtown.

Reception

Daylighting - Glass partitions at the perimeter offices ensure views to the utside and alow daylight to penetrate the interiors.

High-tech glass - Conference-room partitions have electrochromic glazing, enabling them to be rendered opaque or transparent by the flip of a switch.

Trading Floor

Furniture - The continuous work surfaces were made by Innovant from sustainable materials, and are Greenguard certified; Knoll's Life chairs were used for seating and contain 41 percent recycled content.

LED array - LED arrays are set behind frosted glass ceiling panels. The color of LEDs can be changed to any color, but the Bank of America requested red and blue to reflect that brand.

Since the elements were not going to provide the energy necessary to power One Bryant Park, the architects turned to cogeneration. Cogeneration, or CHP (combined heat and power), is the use of a heat engine to produce both electricity and usable heat. One Bryant Park’s 5.1-megawatt-turbine cogeneration plant—working in concert with an ice-storage system—will supply 75 percent of the building’s annual energy and 35 percent of its peak power. Moreover, it’s calculated to provide a payback in just four years.

If cogeneration is the best method of energy and power production, why doesn’t every new building use it? “The effort is difficult and takes a significant commitment from the owner in time, money and resources in order to overcome the technical and regulatory challenges of interconnecting with the utility,” explains Winston. “The complexity of the utility network in midtown Manhattan, along with Con Edison’s aging infrastructure, were challenges. We hope that by pushing ahead and investing the time, money and brain power, and refusing to take no for an answer, that others can will follow our example and [cogeneration] will become easier to implement sooner rather than later.”

In addition to cogeneration, Cook + Fox installed under-floor air distribution (UFAD), the largest such application in New York City to date, instead of traditional forced air, located in the ceiling. This alone is a major milestone in sustainable practice. Widely used in Europe, the technology employs the space in an under-floor plenum to deliver conditioned air directly into the work space. In addition to improving thermal comfort and reducing energy consumption, UFAD allows the HVAC systems and all cabling to be housed in an accessible area. If the proof is in the utility bills, the efficiency of these two applications should remove any lingering doubt that they’re too expensive or complicated.

Another one of the tower’s innovations regarding air is its sophisticated filtration system. One of the ugly truths about global warming is that 48 percent of all CO2 emissions come from buildings. And the air quality in office towers has in the past been notoriously bad. One Bryant Park will draw air in from at least 100 feet above the street, then filter it, removing 95 percent of all particulate matter before filtering it again on each floor. Even more impressive, the air the tower will expel will be significantly cleaner than what is outside.

View related article, “Green from the Inside Out“

Through One Bryant Park’s use of these novel technologies, in addition to more common strategies—high-performance glass curtain wall, LED lighting, green roofs, and recycled and locally sourced materials—the Durst Organization, the Bank of America, and Cook + Fox will likely achieve their mission of building the first commercial high rise in the country to receive the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification. But the ambition of this group goes beyond the tower being a role model for sustainability. They believe they’re creating a new business model for commercial construction. As Serge Appel observes, “Regardless of what you think about global warming or diminishing resources, waste costs money. Why would anyone do that?”

In contrast to the verticality of its massing, the horizontal lines of One Bryant Park's base anchor the building to the street and the hurly burly of cars and pedestrians.

Crystal in the Sky - During the day the course of the sun animates the tower's overlapping folds and varying depths. At night the tower's V-shaped double wall is accentuated with glowing bands on the curtain wall. These bands feature translucent ceramic frit, and are rear illumined with linear LEDs concealed in coves behind the glass. Lighting the building was tricky, according to the designer Francesca Bettridge, of the New York City-based Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design, because of the extreme transparency of the glass and the brightness of the office interiors. The top mechanical floors feature translucent glazing and are lit with fluorescents to match the light emanating from the tower floors. The truss structure supporting the curtain wall above the roof is illuminated with metal halide floodlights.

Return ducts between the ceiling and slab exhaust air as it rises from the underfloor plenum.

An underfloor air distribution system allows cooled air to rise through individually controlled diffusers in a plenum.

Images dBox for Cook+Fox; Gensler

The fiber-reinforced plastic panels that serve as the skin of Zaha Hadid’s sensuous—and portable—Chanel Art Container (see “Nomad Architecture”). Photograph: Virgile Simon Bertrand.

SB: There seems to be a trend toward more graphic work. Is it due to our desire to liken our surroundings to the graphic world of electronic media? While all of these textural environments are visually fascinating, overkill can be exhausting. Especially when the environment not only resonates with graphic dynamism, but also attempts a nostalgic reassurance. No place for the eye to rest is not always a good thing.

The original digital rendering of the toile de Jouy conceived by Marcel Wanders for his curved sofas at the Mondrian South Beach in Miami (see “Check Out Time”).

The intricate structure of Nendo’s plastic Diamond chair was inspired by the atomic configuration of that gemstone (see “Office Product”).

This shaft-woven wool rug from Kasthall, called Ingrid, is inspired by the patterns on traditional Scandinavian sweaters (see “Floorscape”).

The surface of Stephen Burks’s Cappellini Love Mache table is made of shredded design magazines and finished with nontoxic adhesives and hardeners (see “End Note”).

The vividly speckled wool and linen rug Tekla from Kasthall draws its imagery from candies and parties (see “Floorscape”).

“These days, people use the phrase ‘design hotel’ purely as a marketing vehicle,” says Marcel Wanders, who just completed his first such large-scale property, the Mondrian South Beach in Miami. “But you can’t just put a fancy sofa in the lobby and call it a day; a design hotel is an experience that goes beyond—it’s a place to pour your ideas and your dreams.

Wanders is not alone in his sentiment. Industry professionals may be the design hotel’s most insatiable audience, but they are also the genre’s harshest critics—the first ones to call out colleagues on watered-down schemes or savvy marketing plans masquerading as high design. For all the talk about newness and reinvention, few designers truly rethink how guests live in these spaces. Indeed, the basic design of hotel rooms has not changed in decades, according to Raefer H. Wallis of Shanghai’s A00 Architecture. “Bath next to the entrance, bed in the middle of the room, desk wedged in a corner. Add Thai decoration and it becomes a Thai-themed room; add curtains and designer furniture everywhere and it becomes a Philippe Starck,” he says. So much for novelty.

When asked about their favorite destination hotel, designers are as likely to cite Japanese Ryokans or old-world classics such as the Paris Ritz or Claridge’s in London, as they are the Mercer in New York City (which gets a lot of votes). They know to look beyond funky furniture and clever trickery to less overt qualities of mood and authenticity, and to an experience that truly captures the surroundings—be it Beijing or Bali. No, it’s not a formula, but it’s not quite accidental, either; a good hotel is purposeful yet alchemical. Intent gets you only so far. Too often you check in to a self-described design hotel and have the same questions: Where’s the service? Where’s the sophistication? Where’s the soul? (Hint: probably not at Dellis Cay on Turks and Caicos, currently the most heavily promoted piece of architecture porn on a tropical island—and it hasn’t even been built!)

The players behind some of the industry’s most memorable properties are shifting allegiances. Philippe Starck and Ian Schrager—who arguably invented the genre—no longer work together. Starck is busy making waves for upstart hotelier Sam Nazarian. Schrager left his Morgans Hotel Group to build luxury apartments and launch Edition for Marriott. W Hotel mastermind Barry Sternlicht abandoned his baby to invent a new brand, the upscale eco outfit One Hotels. Is such flux a symbol of fatigue, a hint that the category is dying? Or is it a harbinger of exciting new developments? We checked in to six new or soon-to-open properties, and sussed out four new trends.

Design as Cultural Propaganda

For today’s brand of international traveler, it’s important for each property to capture its cultural context; when guests wake up, they want to know where in the world they are.
—A00 Architects

Beijing Mandarin Oriental

www.mandarinoriental.com (Opening in August)

LTW Design Works

www.ltwdesignworks.com

For spectators of the sport of high design, the best seat in the house is in the soon-to-open Beijing Mandarin Oriental. The hotel overlooks Rem Koolhaas/OMA’s love-it-or-hate-it Chinese Central Television (CCTV) headquarters from the media complex’s northernmost building, a shorter, smaller structure that houses various cultural facilities. Equal parts plush and progressive, the hotel interiors by LTW Design Works offer stunning views of OMA’s gymnastically limber loop-de-loop while capturing Beijing’s singularly mixed-up, postmodern sensibility. “We work with each owner/developer to produce a unique design that’s emblematic of its location,” explains Byron Wong, Mandarin Oriental’s Regional Director of Technical Services, Asia. “For today’s brand of international traveler, it’s important for each property to capture its cultural context; when guests wake up, they want to know where in the world they are.”

Creating a sense of place is one thing; doing so within a piece of signature architecture is quite another. Rather than compete against OMA’s assertive form, the hotel design goes along for the ride. “Rem’s radical architecture captures the hopes and ambitions of a future China,” Wong says. “Guests are looking to experience the iconic architecture within the building, too.” Thus the facade’s zinc cladding wraps into such public areas as the reception lobby and 34th-floor Chinese restaurant; meanwhile, south-facing corner guestrooms offer front-row views of the CCTV building through full-height windows.

Rooms mirror the architecture’s futuristic stance with directional touches, including marble-topped bathroom vanities that are open to sleeping areas and high-tech on-demand TV and radio systems. “Guests can access content to suit any cultural preferences—you can pipe in music from Hawaii or from Africa as desired,” says Wong. Finishes are more deliberately Asian, such as wood-veneer wall treatments stained Mandarin red, while furnishings filter foreign touches through a local sensibility. “There’s a lot of new wealth in Beijing, people who’ve lived or traveled extensively abroad and returned to outfit their homes in a contemporary, multicultural mix,” Wong says. “We wanted that quality here.”

Guestroom

Accessories

“We avoided Chinese clichés like panda bears and bamboo floors in favor of familiar materials used in unfamiliar ways,” explains Wong. “Most of the ‘Asian’ identity will come through artworks and accessories.”

Wall

The wall anchoring the bed is paneled in a wood veneer stained Mandarin red. “The material treatment evolved during the design process,” says Wong. “We were initially going to use lacquer or paint, but a colored stain proved the best solution.”

Vanity

Vanities were crafted from a marble common to the region to avoid the cost—and the fossil fuel expenditure—of importing.

Cladding

The design takes cues from the architectural envelope, Wong explains. “Inside, you can feel the expression of the zinc cladding—especially from within the corner rooms. We embraced the material by having the interior scheme complement it.”

Flooring

A nod to nature, the wall-to-wall carpet’s oversized, abstracted plum blossom print was conceived to soften the otherwise severe architecture.

Ballroom

Seating

To counteract the lofty ceiling of the expansive ballroom, LTW sunk the eating area four-and-a-half-feet below the floor level and encircled it with a water-filled moat.

Lighting

LTW envisioned the space as a secret garden, complete with magnolia-print carpeting and a chandelier comprised of a grid of spiraling crystals that cascade in a stylized floral pattern.

Images LTW Design Works

Hotel Urbn, Shanghai

www.urbnhotels.com

AOO Architecture, Shanghai

www.azerozero.com

A different spin on Chinese nationalism is offered in the design of Shanghai’s Hotel Urbn, where the guestroom experience has been rethought to better suit an Asian sensibility, while also reflecting the country’s green aspirations. Indeed, Hotel Urbn is not only the city’s first boutique design hotel, it’s also China’s first carbon-neutral one. “Hospitality is a notoriously hard industry to green,” says the hotel’s designer, Raefer H. Wallis of A00. “Properties typically max out mechanical services while pushing for minimal use of the rooms themselves—notably by designing them around the bed, which discourages guests from using the rooms for anything but sleeping. It’s a huge waste of resources.”

A00’s guest-room layout instead centers on a conversation pit that comfortably accommodates a range of activities from working to entertaining to lounging. “Encouraging people to really use the rooms makes them much less wasteful,” Wallis says. Such multi-tasking pragmatism, he adds, is a particularly Asian quality: “It was a way to say ‘Shanghai’ without being literal.” Encouraging guests to take off their shoes further intensifies the Asian experience, while also keeping rooms cleaner—thus reducing the volume of water and detergents used during housekeeping.

Guestroom

Building

The ceilings of the guestrooms feature a low-VOC red paint.

Finishes

A wall of stacked local slate serves as a decorative accent. Other walls are paneled in reclaimed Shanghai mahogany.

Fabrics

The upholstery fabric in all the guestrooms is made from local hemp.

Layout

To encourage guests to use their rooms for more than sleeping, they feature a conversation pit with compact fluorescents beneath the built-in seating. Many furnishings play double duty: here, the bed becomes a backrest for the lounge.

Decoration Returns

The Royalton, New York City

www.royaltonhotel.com

Roman and Williams, New York City

www.romanandwilliams.com

No doubt, you’ve already heard: the recent redo of Philippe Starck’s landmark public rooms in the Royalton Hotel by Roman and Williams signals a whole new era for the boutique genre. But while observers have reveled in the blood sport of pitting old against new, late-’80s irony against today’s multicultural sensuality, a more radical shift went under-acknowledged: the return to old-school decorating. Note the lobby’s louche, button-tufted leather sofas, Venini chandelier, sculptural steel fireplace surround, and vaguely 1930s glam. The new design eschews set pieces and puns—Philippe Starck signatures—in favor of nuance.

“It’s exciting to have caused controversy,” says Roman and Williams partner Robin Standefer, who, nine months after the big reveal, is taking the continued hullabaloo in stride. “The reaction speaks to a cultural shift. I think people have become fatigued by spaces that are cerebral rather than tactile. We went mad at the opening of the Royalton, how Starck totally busted it open. But 20 years later that audience—including us—has matured.”

What that audience wants, apparently, is a little less wisecracking cleverness and a little more comfort—the kind that comes with plush mink throws and vintage table lamps in steel and bronze. “We’ve always been optimistic that people love warmth and layering, and we’ve pushed our clients to shift their perception of what constitutes luxury today,” says Stephen Alesch, the other half of the Roman and Williams duo. Hotels, he observes, have strayed from what used to be their chief concern: “making us feel good.”

Here, feel-good coziness becomes a cannily effective device for negotiating the opposite needs of two very different hotel guests: the solo traveler, who wants to have a drink in the lobby without feeling weird sitting alone, and the more extroverted type who comes to seek out the scene. Plush, cosseting textures can perform as cocoons or social lubricants as needed.

The touchy-feely approach is also a rejoinder to the cooler-than-thou stance of yore. “The original Royalton had an exciting aura of exclusivity, whereas we strove for a more inviting and inclusive glamour,” Standefer says. Midtown, she explains, is a place where many demographics merge, and where those lounging in the lobby are likely to encounter a broader mix than in their neighborhood bar. The layered design both supports and reiterates the many layers of interaction that unfold within.

Lobby

Furnishings

The lobby with its button tufted-leather seating was designed to be inviting and cozy, “like hanging out in some cool guy’s living room,” says Standefer.

Sourcing

A 1940s aluminum screen from Paris became the touchstone for the room’s design. Other metalwork for the furnishings and fireplace was custom-fabricated by craftspeople in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Arizona. The room’s crystal sphere chandeliers were designed by Alison Berger (see “Fabricator“).

Restaurant

Lighting

The brasserie is lt by blown-glass pendants fabricated by Brooklyn artist John Pomp. “The lighting lends a mysterious quality to this primarily windowless space,” says Stadefer. “You don’t quite know if it’s day or night when you’re in there.”

Detailing

Embellished with ropework crafted by a Canadian artist, the millwork throughout is teak. “We wanted the design to be restrained and speak to the tradition of grand old hotel dining rooms, which we always find so peaceful and quiet,” noters Alesch.

Photos Nikolas Koening

The Tides South Beach, Miami

www.tidessouthbeach.com

Kelly Wearstler, Los Angeles

www.kwid.com

If Roman and Williams’s design is about nestling in—with either your own musings or a cute foreigner, Kelly Wearstler’s new look for the art-deco era Tides Hotel South Beach is about kicking back and looking back. It’s “a classic example of streamlined, minimalist 1930s design,” Wearstler says. “I paid homage to its history by carefully respecting Miami’s culture and Art Deco roots—it’s 21st-century luxury, juxtaposed with casual elegance, while honoring the city’s inherent beachfront spirit.”

There’s button-tufted leather seating here, too, and animal fur: the 45 guestrooms feature lush driftwood-hued travertine scattered with zebra skin rugs. It’s all softly colorful, with a palette of corals and peaches and lemon, and distinctly pretty—an adjective Wearstler has never been distrustful of.

The property is the flagship for the Kor Hotel Group’s newest brand, The Tides, focused on waterfront properties. The South Beach location is one of three renovations, the other two are in Mexico. There are also new properties planned for sites in Vietnam, Mexico, and Anguilla. As such, Wearstler’s task was not just reinventing one of the more quietly luxe properties in South Beach (a place not know for being quietly luxe), but kick-starting a brand. Each Tides resort will be injected with a unique residential spirit that reflects its location.

Indeed, the guestrooms in the Tides feel as if they were assembled over time. There’s a mismatched quality to the furniture, as if it had been picked up at flea markets abroad and then refinished and upholstered for a design enthusiast’s home. There are clever design details too, such as swapping the solid walls between the living and sleeping areas for airy wood screens. More signature Wearstler is on show in La Marea, the ground floor restaurant: tortoise-shell wall art, vintage brass palm tree sculptures, and dining chairs that look as if they were made from rope. Settling in to one of her baroque porter chairs in chocolate leather, you feel all the comforts of home—and all the glamour of escaping it for awhile.

Guest Room

Palette

The color and materials palettes—from weathered woodwork to soft pinks and yellows—derive from and play off of the oceanfront surroundings.

Furnishings
In each of the Tides’s 45 guest rooms, one-off vintage furnishings intermingle with custom pieces.

Dining Room

Accessories

A pair of vintage brass palm tree sculptures in the ground-floor restaurant, La Marea, recalls the building’s art deco heritage. So too do the hanging lamps of alabaster and brass.

Wall Treatment

In lieu of artwork, rows of faux-resin tortoise shells—a Wearstler signature—animate the upper walls.

Guest Room

Accessories

Many of the custom furnishings and accessories featured throughout are based on ones in Wearstler’s personal collection.

Rugs

Hide rugs embellished with a zebra pattern serve as room accents.

Flooring

Floors are tiled in travertine the color of sun-kissed sand. “I find stone to be so cool and fresh after a day at the beach,” says Wearstler.

Seating

Nature inspired many of the furnishings like the hand-carved leaf-backed wood chairs modeled on ones found at a French flea market.

Surface Depth

Mondrian South Beach, Miami

www.mondriansouthbeach.com (Opening late August)

Marcel Wanders Studio, Amsterdam

www.marcelwanders.nl

Count on Marcel Wanders to dream up a fantastical design that has nothing to do with focus-group research, marketing plans, or even perceived wisdom. His scheme for the Mondrian South Beach takes inspiration from the building’s castle-like form as well as its essential function. “People go to a hotel to sleep, so we based the design on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. Not in a literal way, though,” he says. “We wanted to create the feeling of being in a royal theatrical place.”

Theatrical it is. Each of the 335 suites offers bedrooms livened by zingy damask-print wallcoverings, kitchens clad in Delftware-style porcelain tiles, painted with Floridian imagery like crocodiles and beach scenes, and sculptural soaking tubs enveloped in blue-and-white mosaic murals based on a blown-up photograph of the Miami sky scattered with puffy white clouds.

Such emphasis on skin-deep surfaces and two-dimensional patterning begs the question: is Wanders cheekily alluding to the city’s, um, superficial side? “You can call it surface or you can just call it design,” he says. “It’s all to make the rooms as fabulous and sophisticated as possible, while providing the necessary guestroom requirements. The surface patterning actually keeps the space itself quite architectural.” Flatness, then, in the service of volume.

Limiting the pyrotechnics to the walls and floors helps maximize square footage—an especially important consideration given the property’s hybrid “hondo” status. Further enhancing the perception of loft-like proportions, Wanders kept floorplans as open as possible and created spatial continuity with continuous flooring that run throughout, even onto the open-air balconies. In the bedrooms, only a clear pane of glass separates sleeping and bathing areas; a billowing white curtain is the sole concession to modesty.

Signature Wanders whimsy—the huge columns that look like turned-wood table legs, and the enormous blow-up images of beautiful women—is matched by tongue-in-cheek cleverness. Indeed, his most fanciful design detail is also the most functional: showerheads in the form of crystal chandeliers that double as operable lighting fixtures. “We just combined two ideas—water and light—it was very simple. In Dutch we call it vanzelfsprekend: it speaks for itself,” says Wanders, inadvertently summarizing his strategy for the entire property.

Guest Room

Layout

In lieu of solid walls, Wanders separated sleeping and bathing areas with a full-height pane of clear glass to create a loftlike bedroom suite; a curtain offers privacy if desired.

Finishes

The tub enclosure is clad in custom-glass mosaic tiles from Bisazza patterned on a photograph of the Miami sky. Wanders designed the tub, called “Soap Bath,” which is also available from Bisazza.

Bathroom

Lighting

In each bathroom, a crystal-like chandelier plays double duty as a showerhead. Wanders designed similar fixtures to hang over the outdoor swimming pool.

Images Marcel Wanders Studio

“Just Be” High Style

SLS Beverly Hills, Los Angeles

www.slsbeverlyhills.com (Opening late August)

Philippe Starck, Paris

www.starcknetwork.com

L.A. nightlife impresario Sam Nazarian hopes to bring the A-list aura he has cultivated in his buzzy clubs and restaurants to his hospitality debut, the SLS Hotel Beverly Hills, which opens this summer. His renegade style and celebrity connections have drawn the inevitable (if as yet undeserved) comparisons to the original party animal/boutique hotelier, Ian Schrager. And, indeed, Nazarian has a lot going for him: a chief creative officer plucked from W Hotels, a retail partnership with tastemaker Murray Moss, and a 15-year design exclusive with Schrager’s old bud, Philippe Starck. (An arrangement that seems not to preclude Starck working on extraterrestrial projects like the Virgin Galactic space port.)

The SLS concept explores familiar boutique hotel turf. Namely, how to redefine luxury for today’s been-there, done-that, own-it-all jet-setter while delivering a design that is at once unique yet eternally replicable. This is where Moss fits in. As he tells it, Starck came to him with the idea of curating “a contemporary Bazaar to flow in/around/and literally through the main floor of his new, ‘grand hotel’ like a Venetian canal.” How could Moss say no? “Philippe’s scenographic thinking is so akin to mine, as is his love of grand hotels, and those beautiful vitrines which float through magnificent public spaces in 19th-century European grand hotels,” he continues. The SLS Bazaar will offer some 35 custom-designed vitrines, each different from the next, and each containing a unique set of offerings, including vintage Sèvres busts of Marie Antoinette and Napoleon, hand-painted Lobmeyr tumblers, German chocolate birds and monkey-shaped candles.

Striking a balance between one-off and mass-producible is a challenge for which the accessibly artsy Starck is well suited. He sees his job as more conjurer than designer. “To me, a building is not made of steel and glass,” he says. “That’s just a shell. My job is to create life within. The only acceptable style is the freedom to choose.” Smartly, SLS offers guests freedom to choose between two lobbies: one for check-in, and a second one that serves as the property’s more public face, encompassing lounge area, Moss’s boutique, and bars and restaurants featuring organic food. “The SLS will be elegant and eco—we’re even working on an organic laundry,” Starck notes. The emphasis on health and wellness doesn’t end there; the hotel will offer seven fitness suites with custom-designed training equipment by Italian manufacturer Technogym.

As for the interiors, don’t read too much into the surprising emphasis on clean lines, the custom Cassina furnishings, the lobby’s commingling of communal tables and wacky chandeliers, or the Mies-inspired guestroom’s window seats—a clever alternative to an underutilized armchair. Style is not a concept that concerns the oh-so-poetic Starck. In the press materials, he says, “Style? What is it, really? I have no taste, but I know my life.” He even dreamed up an acronym for the meaningless but open-to-interpretation hotel name: “Some Little Secrets”—one of which, tellingly, is “Beauty is an opinion.”

Starck speaks—and conjures—with the confidence of someone who is at the top of his game, and the top of his industry. If anyone can revolutionize the design hotel, it is Philippe Starck.

Guest Room

Fitness

For the hotel’s seven fitness suites, SBE Group partnered with Italian manufacturer Technogym to customize space-conscious workout machines that can be used for 200 exercises.

Layout

Accommodating gym facilities in guest rooms proved not just a spatial challenge but an aesthetic one, too. Elements are hidden in plain sight: backless stools can be used for exercises in front of the full-height mirrors.

Furnishings

Starck partnered with Cassina Contract to create custom furnishings such as the tufted window seat, which will be sold exclusively through the hotel.

Bedding

A number of the guestrooms are hypo-allergenic, and will feature organic sheets and eco-conscious laundry services.

Bazaar

Lobby

The hotel offers guests a choice of two lobbies: a quiet retreat for check-in and personal service and a second—seen here, and dubbed the Bazaar—that also functions as a lounge and dining space.

Retail

Design guru Murray Moss will curate an open-walled boutique that threads through the lobby: a series of freestanding glass vitrines offering one-of-a-kind goods like Lobmyer tumblers and model ships.

Layout

The expansive Bazaar is divided into more intimate seating areas by ceiling-mounted white drapes—a Starck signature.

Dining

Communal tables in the eating area where small-plate cuisine by the Spanish chef José Andrés is served encourage mingling.

Ceiling

The mahogany floor wraps up one wall and onto the ceiling, imbuing the space with a heightened sense of intimacy.

Lighting

The lobby is lit by chandeliers, no two of which are the same. Most are vintage or found pieces selected to convey luxury while not seeming too serious.

Flooring

The hardwood floor segues to lightly veined Thassos marble in the dining area, which slices through the center of the space.

Images Starck Network

The majestic lobby of the Hotel du Palais.

1893

Hôtel du Palais

Biarritz

www.hotel-du-palais.com

When Napoleon lll built the Villa Eugénie on the bay of Biscay for his consort royal in 1855, he helped transform the drowsy fishing village of Biarritz into a posh resort town. Other crowned heads soon followed for the breathtaking scenery and novelty of sea bathing. With the restoration of the Republic, the summer palace was turned into a casino and later, a five-star hotel, all the while preserving its splendid Second Empire decor, which was much imitated by other fin-de-siècle grand hotels. Its acclaimed new Imperial Spa has once again made the hotel a magnet for the glitterati.

The timeless style of Claridge's foyer

1898

Claridge’s Hotel

London

www.claridges.co.uk

Reopening in a new building in 1898, with such state-of-the-art conveniences as electricity, elevators and en suite bathrooms, the nearly 90-year-old hostelry assured its guests, many of them Europe’s royals, that these modern amenities “would not in the least interfere with their comfort and privacy.” In the ’20s, when London’s smart set made the hotel a haunt, Claridge’s was canny enough to respond to shifting tastes by expanding and redecorating some rooms in the new deco style. Afterward, the interiors remained largely unchanged until the ’90s, when Thierry Despont tweaked the foyer with such new fittings as a Dale Chihuly chandelier. Last year, Claridge’s unveiled 11 David Linley-designed suites, reinterpreting the traditional and deco interiors for the 21st-century.

The modern baroque of the Fountainbleau.

1954

Fontainebleau

Miami Beach

www.fontainebleau.com

Morris Lapidus took the three things he’d employed in store design to entice customers—light, color and curves—and combined them with theatrically calculated, baroque interiors to create the modern American resort hotel. The Fontainebleau’s dynamic, curving facade not only caught ocean breezes in pre-central-air Miami, it also disguised long hallway distances. How people move through spaces, the effect of lighting and scale changes, the ego boost of a dramatic entrance—all of these concepts played out in the Fontainebleau’s revolutionary design. Critics cried glitz (and far worse) in reaction to this sprawling city-unto-itself, but guests—including presidents, Hollywood headliners and James Bond—saw only the glamour.

The Eastern mystique of the Golden Door's rock garden.

1958

Golden Door

Escondido

www.goldendoor.com

Responding to the requests of her guests for more pampering, California spa guru Deborah Szekely took her ideas about mind-body-fitness and created a new retreat, called the Golden Door, modeled on Japan’s luxurious honjin. The design, exotic for the time with its sliding rice–paper doors and Zen rock garden, became as much a draw as the spa’s pioneering treatments and slimming cuisine.

The Parisian chic of the bathroom at Morgans.

1984

Morgans

New York City

www.morganshotel.com

Less proved more when the derelict Executive Hotel was transformed into the tony Morgans by Andrée Putman. In her first hotel project the Parisian ditched traditional ideas of what a hotel should look like (goodbye, chintz, so long, bedspreads) and turned more than a 100 tiny rooms into compact, luxe oases notable for soothing neutrals, Mallet-Stevens chairs, and Fortuny lamps. For many guests, experiencing the black-and-white baths, fitted with minimalist stainless steel sinks, was alone worth the price of a stay. A hit the year it opened, this informal version of a European hotel is the imaginative precursor of today’s “boutique” movement.

The witty futurism of the original Royalton Hotel.

1988

The Royalton

New York City

www.royaltonhotel.com

The design hotel made its debut on a seemingly endless catwalk of gorgeous blue carpeting in the witty lobby of this trendsetter. Philippe Starck irreverently reconceived the hotel as an opulent, space age refuge from reality, with horn-shaped sconces, peculiar one-armed easy chairs, and sexy velvet, chartreuse-colored sofas. Guest rooms felt like futuristic ocean-liner cabins, and Brasserie 44 became the lunchtime clubhouse of the fashion crowd. Alas, this profoundly influential interior did not survive the hotel’s change of ownership.

The earthy modernism of the first W Hotel.

1998

W Hotel

New York City

www.whotels.com/newyork

The notion of a chain hotel was upended when the W brand debuted in this, its first location; today, this upscale chain operates 21 Ws in cities around the world, and several other boutique brands are soon to launch. Working with wind, water, earth and fire as inspiration, David Rockwell created a midtown Manhattan hotel that was a sanctuary of airy public lounges and spa-influenced design: A waterfall served as lobby divider, tree stumps became tables, and walls featured collages of seed pods and other natural materials. This was hardly another night at the Best Western.

Photos Hotel du Palais; Claridge’s Hotel; Fontainebleau; Golden Door; Morgans Hotel Group; W Hotels

How Margi Glavovic Nothard turned a wedding gazebo commission into an arts-themed park, sparking the renewal of Hollywood, Florida’s downtown.

Hollywood, Florida, may be only a half hour’s drive north of Miami, but it has always felt as if it were a world away. It lacks Miami’s cosmopolitan vibe. Its population is whiter and more conservative. It is a staid place. The city was built in the ’20s by the developer John Young, who planned it according to the principles of the City Beautiful movement—a philosophy of urban planning that was already then verging on obsolescence. Yet it is here in Hollywood that a long neglected park in the blighted business district has been transformed into a vibrant arts-themed destination with cutting-edge architecture and landscape design. Clichéd as it sounds, ArtsPark has reinvigorated the community and revived the neighborhood. Credit for this act of urban renewal goes largely to ArtsPark’s designer, who was also its organizing dynamo, Margi Glavovic Nothard of the Fort Lauderdale–based architecture firm Glavovic Studio. How this South African transplant accomplished this feat of progressive urban thinking is a story of imagination, determination and stealth.

The park in question was the neglected Young Circle, a 10-acre common in the middle of a traffic rotary, encircled by U.S. Highway 1. When it was first built, the roadway was no busier than the main street of any small American city. Over the years, however, the increasing rush of traffic, expanding to four lanes in some places, cut residents off from the park, and the island became a haunt of the homeless. Without visitors, street life around the park’s perimeter diminished. To salvage Young Circle, in 2000 the community’s redevelopment agency hired a landscape architecture firm to “beautify” it in Beaux-Arts style. Nothard, who was devising a master plan for Hollywood’s Arts and Culture Center, was invited to design the park’s wedding gazebo. “What I was paid for was a three-day project that ended up taking years to complete,” she says, laughing.

Margi Glavovic Nothard’s landscape design drew on the exuberant play of plantings and pavement found in the tropical gardens of Roberto Burle Marx.

After taking the gazebo gig, Nothard remarked to Cynthia Berman Miller, the director of the Arts and Culture Center, that “what the park needed was a forward-looking design with arts programming to attract residents and revitalize the community.” Miller agreed and introduced her to the city’s mayor, Mara Giulianti, who saw an opportunity to rebrand Hollywood as “The City of the Arts,” using the new park as impetus.

Giulianti knew too that the arts could mean money. Hollywood is part of Broward County, which had just inaugurated a competitive cultural grant program to match up to $5 million of what funds any city in the county had allotted for an urban renewal scheme, if it included cultural/arts programming. With the support of the mayor, the city manager Cameron Benson took control of Young Circle’s renewal from the community redevelopment agency, enabling Nothard to conceive a new scheme and write a grant proposal.

Nothard had never before designed a park. In planning which events and elements should go where, she drew on theories of spatial complexity from sources as diverse as Frederick Law Olmstead and Christopher Alexander; for the design, she turned to the exuberant, freewheeling tropical parks of Roberto Burle Marx. Her scheme included a visual arts pavilion with studios for professional artists and metalworking and glassblowing facilities for use by the public, a performing arts pavilion and an outdoor amphitheater.

In planning which events and elements would go where, Nothard drew on the spatial theories of Frederick Law Olmstead and Christopher Alexander.

In her proposal Nothard characterized her design “as an integrated artwork that transforms from an organic landscape into a constructed landscape, [with] the architecture as landscape and sculpture.” She was careful not to explicitly describe the buildings. She knew that any real talk of contemporary design would turn off some reactionary, and vocal, members of the community and committees.

But these individuals found other aspects of the plan to attack, such as the curving berm she suggested inserting into the landscape to add interest and layering, so that the passersby would not look directly at the highway on the other side of the park. They complained it would block “the view.” There were also objections to the sculptural European playground equipment she proposed, with residents demanding conventional equipment and calling Nothard, whose two sons were then playground goers, a “bad mother.” Ultimately a hundred local artists mobilized by Miller testified in support of ArtsPark, and the new scheme won approval.

While Nothard admits to being cagey in her public presentation of ArtsPark, she is quick to assert that she believed “we were offering the community something that they would love. We showed them renderings but did not focus on the architecture, talking instead about the experiences they would have in the park and how it would bring the community together, something architects don’t always do. This was an essential strategy in a very fractured community.” Broward County awarded Hollywood a grant of $5 million for ArtsPark. With more fund-raising the city ultimately amassed some $30 million to construct the park.

Although the performing arts pavilion has not yet been built—the city is still raising money—ArtsPark, which opened last fall, is already a success. “The park is used by young families and teenagers,” says Nothard. “There are tai chi sessions and drumming performances. The visual arts pavilion is fully programmed. The eateries along the park’s urban perimeter are livelier, and new residential highrises are now going up nearby.”

Hollywood may still not be Miami, but Miami doesn’t have an ArtsPark.

The raised pavement in the children’s playground is covered in a colorful soft rubber compound, so that children can run about without getting hurt. The pavement also features lighting along its sides for nighttime illumination.

Nothard’s cutting-edge visual arts pavilion features glassblowing and metalworking facilities, artists’ studios, and a small exhibition space.

The children’s play area features fountains and a lively multicolored geometric surface made out of a soft rubber compound.

Photos Robin Hill