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02.01.24

Interiors

How Do You Make a Home Inside a Monument? Ask the Gachots, Who Just Spent Three Years Living in a Paul Rudolph Masterpiece

In 1976, the architect Paul Rudolph bought the 19th-century townhouse at 23 Beekman Place where he’d had an apartment since the early '60s. While keeping the existing building as residences, he constructed his now-landmarked, multi-level penthouse on top of it: a steel and cement work of art that is rigorous and spare in its lines yet dizzying in its scope and form. Inside, beams clad in reflective material support a light-filled space with few walls, delineated by platforms and catwalks and cantilevered, landscaped terraces with spectacular views out over FDR Drive and the East River. For Rudolph, it was a kind of creative laboratory — and it’s also not hard to imagine it as a site for glamorous, louche, late disco-era parties. But how about a family home? Enter designers John and Christine Gachot, of New York’s Gachot, known for the warm modernism they bring to their high-end interiors.
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03.01.22

Up and Coming

A Young, Milan-Based Designer Inspired by the Brutalist Architecture of Eastern Europe

There are two distinct threads that run through the work of Milan-based, Macedonia-born designer Daniel Nikolovski. The first is a penchant for storytelling. His objects and furniture all seem to point to an obscure reference or emerge from a well-thought-out backstory; the forms that make up his EYE Lamps, for example, were inspired by Yugoslavian monuments, like the Brutalist buildings Kenzo Tange constructed in Nikolovski’s hometown of Skopje following an earthquake that decimated the city in 1963. The other major tenet of his work is craftsmanship, which is actually the reason he ended up in Italy at all.
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06.01.21

Up and Coming

A New Lighting Collection Inspired By the 1960s Modernism of Fire Island Pines

“Growing up, I always love stained glass,” recalls Peter B. Staples, discussing the early design experiments that would eventually lead to the launch of his lighting brand Blue Green Works. “I grew up in a Craftsman-style home, and one summer, my dad and I found the plans for the original stained glass lanterns. We taught ourselves how to fix and recreate them. I was probably 12 at the time and that experience really stayed with me.” But while the exercise was clearly formative, Staples would have to take a circuitous path through the New York design scene before returning to lighting. Having previously worked at The Future Perfect and Apparatus, Blue Green Works marks the first time Staples has designed a collection himself — which you would never guess just by looking at it.
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03.18.21

Interiors

Peek Inside a Barbican Apartment Full of Period-Appropriate Furniture

If you're one of those people — ourselves included — who have fantasized about living in one of the 2,000 apartments that make up the Barbican housing estate in London, where Brutalism meets Roman ruins meets exquisite landscape design, we have a treat for you: a look inside the home of interior architect Oskar Kohnen, located inside the estate's 1973 Defoe House.
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Jonah Takagi glass brut vessels
09.05.19

The Making of

In a New Collection, Jonah Takagi Reimagines French Brutalism in Shimmering, Colored Glass

Jonah Takagi has always been inspired by architecture. His first foray into the design world, nearly a decade ago, included furniture inspired by Tinkertoys, and an early series of tables for Matter employed architectural elements in miniature, like I-beams, columns, and trusses. “My dad’s an architect, and it was something I considered pursuing,” Takagi says. “Now I make things that go inside buildings.” It makes sense, then, that Takagi’s latest collection — a series of stepped, angular glass vessels in deeply saturated or disco iridescent hues — would be inspired by one of architecture’s most recognizable structures: Le Corbusier’s Brutalist 1952 Unité d’Habitation housing complex in Marseilles, France.
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08.15.19

Up and Coming

Brutalist Ceramics Inspired By the Pacific Northwest’s Most Famous Volcanic Explosion

LGS Studio, a ceramics brand founded by Thomas Renaud and Noel Hennessy, is currently based out of Los Angeles. But the company actually got its start a few years back in a garage in Portland, Oregon, where the founders were living at the time. Which is what makes their latest collection all the more personal — called Tephra, it's inspired by growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the aftermath of the 1980 Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption.
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10.22.18

Sighted

Wall-to-Wall Carpeting Inspired By Architectural Jewelry? Yes, You Heard That Right

It might seem odd that a 235-year-old company — specializing in wall-to-wall carpeting for hotels, airports, casinos, and cruise ships — would collaborate with a relatively unknown jewelry designer from Australia, as is the case with Brintons' recent collaboration with Studio Elke. But in fact, it makes sense that Brintons would be moved by Elke's designs, which are often inspired by things like architecture, geometry, Art Deco, terrazzo, marble, and stone — in other words, things that easily and naturally translate into two-dimensional patterns.
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Brutalist-inspire ikebana vases by Studio Testo
06.19.18

Shopping

These Brutalist-Inspired Vases Will Up Your Ikebana Game

Last time we featured Studio Testo, we noted Giulia Dolci and Giulia Fauro Alessi’s uncanny ability to make pieces that are on-trend and effortlessly cool. So it comes as no surprise that their latest collection of sculptural vases has a similarly refreshing vibe, taking cues from Brutalist architecture and adding in some ikebana by Irene Cuzzaniti and fresh textiles by AH/OK.
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