For Design Lovers, Spencer’s is the New York Spa We’ve Been Waiting For

I've been to spas all over the world, and it's not that I'm unable to relax, per se. It's that — to be perfectly frank about my occupational hang-ups — my mind has often remained restless in waiting rooms as I silently judge a spa's design decisions, wondering why it's so hard for someone to come along and design something truly cool. From the garish, Daily Candy–era palette of Bliss spas to the grotto-esque cosplay of Great Jones, there's never been something that felt completely like a true design person's vibe — until now. The new Spencer's spa in Soho was designed by founder Ryan McCarthy in partnership with Charlotte Taylor and EBBA Architects. Enter the space, and you're greeted by a soothing, impeccably furnished lounge that's akin to stumbling into your favorite Hackney vintage shop. The whole thing makes you want to throw away your furniture and start all over with a palette of swirly Ron Arad chairs, Regency-era benches, Paul Evans–esque coffee tables, primitive abstract sculptures, and a bookcase full of vintage gems about design, art, women, wellness, tarot, and the occult.
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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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Anna Karlin’s New Collection is All Sculptural Forms and Sophisticated Whimsy

There was no definitive starting point for Anna Karlin’s new collection, no big moment, but rather a gradual becoming over a stretch of time. “The way that I work is essentially all one long conversation,” Karlin says. Some pieces are the result of an experiment from years back, set on the backburner until it finally makes sense in relation to something else. “I think about pieces in dialogue rather than in isolation, and a language develops.” It’s a call and response: a curve begs for a clean line, a futuristic turn hankers for heritage. And Karlin listens. “Once it gets to a point where every piece has bounced off another and the circle closes, then that's the collection,” she explains. “It sort of decides itself.”
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The Best of New York Design Week 2023, Part II

Part II of our New York Design Week roundup — the second and final in our coverage, though we technically had so much content we could have easily done three — is mostly an accounting of the more straightforward side of design week, from group exhibitions — like the launch of the Mexican and Latin American design–focused retailer Omet and the latest Radiator Show, which upends the idea of comfort at home — to sophisticated new collection presentations by brands like Atelier de Troupe and Orior. Plus, a handful of interesting collabs, and a birds-eye view of ICFF.
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On the Hunt for Objects? Shop Our Book IRL at Nordstrom’s Manhattan Flagship

In our book, How to Live With Objects, we talk a lot about how rewarding it is to slowly and thoughtfully surround yourself with unique objects you feel a connection to, hence why we also caution against the department-store mentality of treating your interior as a series of empty spaces you should fill all at once. But when the department store itself becomes the place to find those unique objects, that advice obviously no longer applies — case in point, our new pop-in inside Nordstrom's midtown Manhattan flagship store, where now through June 17, you can shop nearly 100 truly special handmade, one-of-a-kind, and vintage objects from some of the makers and dealers featured in the book (as well as the actual book).
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Meet the NYC Art Collective Who Brought Their Explorations of “Vaguely Asian” Identities to Milan

Comprising four New York City–based artists, the collective CFGNY employs an unruly creative output to assert their own lived experience of being what they call “vaguely Asian” in America. The group recently staged an exhibition called Emporium during last month’s Milan furniture fair — presented by Italian leather brand Marséll and curated by PIN-UP magazine’s Felix Burrichter — that employs cardboard, porcelain, and leather to further complicate this idea of a blurry Asian-ness. The sculptures created with Marséll especially for the show, like leather-wrapped replicas of architectural details from Milan’s Chinatown, elucidate contact points between cultures and identity groups.
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Jacqueline Sullivan’s Tribeca Gallery Breathes New Life Into the NYC Design Scene

Gertrude Stein’s experimental text Tender Buttons is more than a hundred years old and yet it still surprises. In the book’s three sections — Objects, Food, and Rooms — Stein evokes an eclectic domestic scene that it is at once cozy and weird, making ordinary things, and language itself, strange, beguiling, and new. It’s what New York gallerist Jacqueline Sullivan is also after in her inaugural exhibition: working to reframe and refresh objects and the ways we live with them.
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Emily Mullin Jack Hanley

Emily Mullin’s 3D Reliefs Are Like Morandi Still-Lifes On Acid

The new sculptures that make up Brooklyn-based artist Emily Mullin’s just-opened show at Jack Hanley Gallery are, to put it lightly, a riot: fringed or seemingly filigreed ceramic vessels scrawled on with what looks like crayon or painted in imprecise patterns, sitting atop blobby, brightly colored plinths. At first glance, you wouldn’t associate the boisterous reliefs with the quiet, muted tones found in still lifes by 20th-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, but upon further inspection, the comparison makes a lot of sense.
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Steven Holl designer Airbnb

How This Steven Holl House Went From Architectural Showpiece to Sold-Out Weekend Getaway

The Ex of In House in Rhinebeck was designed by Steven Holl and his team as a conceptual manifesto, but he realized that as a high-end rental, it could help fund his non-profit architecture school and artist’s residency. Seasoned Airbnb host Sarah Hutchings stepped in to cozy up the house and make it amenable for overnight stays, and now she acts as a sort of architectural ambassador for its guests. We recently interviewed her about the house, its interior, and the unique experience of staying in it. See the amazing photos after the jump.
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Travertine, Salt, and Wood: Gregory Beson and the Beauty of Tangible Materials

There’s something refreshingly thoughtful about the way New York–based furniture designer and Parsons professor Gregory Beson talks about his practice. He may be represented by Love House in New York and Rossana Orlandi in Milan, but when discussing his recent collection, Home Group One, it’s not some white-gloved gallery where he pictures it. “I see the pieces as plinths for living,” says the Massachusetts-born designer, describing the series of tables, chairs, and shelving formed of interlocking planes of solid walnut.
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Three New Design Hotels That Have Us Dreaming of Sightseeing in Paris, Surfing in New York, and Skiing in Georgia

While it still remains to be seen whether we'll be able to travel responsibly and safely in 2021 once we and many others are finally vaccinated, that hasn't stopped us from using summer travel fantasies as a crutch to get through our winter lockdown. Currently starring in those fantasies? Three new hotels with a serious design pedigree in three of our favorite places.
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The New Lambert & Fils New York Showroom is, Like the Brand Itself, an Incubator for Collaboration

To celebrate Lambert & Fils’s 10th anniversary back in early March, the Montreal-based brand’s founder, Samuel Lambert, traveled to New York City to sign a lease on a 1,500-sq.ft. space on the corner of Hudson and Duane Streets in Tribeca, fulfilling a longtime dream of opening a showroom in Manhattan. Of course, we all know what happens next: Within 24 hours of signing the lease, the city was in lockdown. “It was pretty much inked paper and then total chaos,” laughs Lambert’s brand and marketing director Rory Seydel. “But we took the challenge as a part of the process. What does a showroom even mean in 2021?”
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