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      Kelly Wearstler's “fiercely local” Santa Monica Proper Hotel named AHEAD Americas Hotel of the Year

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      American designer Kelly Wearstler describes how she worked with local artisans and artists on the Santa Monica Proper Hotel in this video produced by Dezeen for the AHEAD Awards.Wearstler is the designer of Santa Monica Proper Hotel, a 271-room boutique hotel seven blocks away from the beach in Santa Monica, California.

      American interior designer Kelly Wearstler designed the Santa Monica Proper Hotel
      The project was named Hotel of the Year at the 2020 AHEAD Americas hospitality awards, as well as winner of the Guestrooms and Lobby & Public Spaces categories.

      The Californian interior designer, who has appeared as a judge on the Bravo reality show Top Design and designed homes for celebrities including Cameron Diaz and Gwen Stefani, described the hotel as “fiercely local” in an exclusive interview filmed by Dezeen.

      Santa Monica Proper Hotel was named Hotel of the Year at the AHEAD Americas awards 2020
      “We wanted to design a hotel where it felt like you’re in Santa Monica,” she said. “The inspiration came from everything that surrounds the hotel, the palm trees, the organic nature of the architecture, everything that you would find at the beach.”
      Natural and heavily textured materials, neutral colours and vintage furniture are used throughout the hotel to create a sensory experience that references Santa Monica’s beachside identity.

      Kelly Wearstler designs relaxed and beachy Santa Monica Proper hotel

      “There is a connection of materiality that speaks to the location” said Wearstler. “Organic materials, neutral colour stories, everything has a texture.”
      “There’s a patina, there’s a hand, there’s something that feels very warm.”

      The hotel also won in the Guestrooms and Lobby & Public Spaces categories
      Santa Monica Proper Hotel is filled with artworks and furniture pieces created specifically for the property by local artists and artisans.
      “Everything’s connected to somebody that is local in the city,” Wearstler said. “We’re so lucky to be in Los Angeles, the talent pool here is extraordinary.”

      The site comprises an historic 1920s building and a new curvilinear extension
      The site consists of the 1920s Santa Monica Professional Building, to which an extension by local firm Howard Laks Architects was added.
      “There’s an historic building that was built in 1928, in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, and then there’s a new contemporary building,” explained Wearstler. “We had to connect these two buildings with one voice.”

      Kelly Wearstler furnishes San Francisco Proper hotel with vintage European design

      “The atmosphere is something that’s just very relaxed,” the designer asserted. “When you come to California, it’s just super relaxed and it’s friendly, and there is a sense of style – it’s just cool. We can connect you to that coming to Santa Monica Proper.”
      The hotel is the latest in the Proper brand, which was founded by Wearstler’s developer husband Brad Korzen alongside hotelier Brian De Lowe, following the San Francisco Proper which Wearstler also designed.

      Wearstler collaborated with local artists and artisans to furnish Santa Monica Proper Hotel
      Previous hospitality collaborations from Wearstler and Korzen include the Tides hotel in South Beach, Florida, the Avalon and Maison 140 hotels in Beverly Hills, and hotels for the Viceroy brand in Miami, Palm Springs and Santa Monica.
      This year’s AHEAD Americas awards were shown in a video ceremony as part of Dezeen’s Virtual Design Festival after the event was called off due to the coronavirus pandemic. Previous winners of the Hotel of the Year award include the opulent Siren Hotel in Detroit and the Calistoga Motor Lodge and Spa, a renovated motel in California.

      Natural materials and neutral colours reference the hotel’s beachside location
      This video was produced by Dezeen for AHEAD. Photography is by The Ingalls and Matthieu Salvaing.

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      Virgil Abloh and AMO design flexible flagship Off-White store in Miami that “can host a runway show”

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      Fashion designer Virgil Abloh and AMO director Samir Bantal have designed the Off-White flagship store in Miami Design District to be a fulfilment centre and a multipurpose events space. Abloh, who owns the brand Off-White, and Bantal, director of architecture firm OMA’s research arm AMO, designed the store to rethink how physical shops should operate amid the growing popularity of digital shopping.

      “We’re niche entities, AMO, Off-White, Samir and myself, so we’re able to sort of wear our heart on our sleeve or our brain on our sleeve,” Abloh told Dezeen. “The first slide that Samir sent for the development was like, is shopping relevant?”

      “If we’re able to kind of fulfil our needs by ordering a lot of things online, what’s the role of a physical store?,” Bantal added.

      The idea is that the store is flexible, according to Abloh, who citied the annual Art Basel and Design Miami events that take place in Miami as examples of when it could be used to host a variety of activities, like art and music events, and talks.
      “There might be 1,000 people, you know, in key moments of that year where the shop can host a runway show, it can host a talk, it can host a cafe,” Abloh said.
      “It’ll be a cafe that extends out into the street, it’ll be what the environment needs it to be rather than the betting on, hey, this square footage needs to be used for retail 24 seven,” he added.
      “Who knows, by the time it opens I might turn it into like an Uber delivery of Off-White – that’s the freedom and the fun.”

      In response, the store is stripped back to only provide storage space for apparel on sale so it could easily be used for a variety of activities and cultural events.
      “We played with the idea of translating the store into a fulfilment center,” Bantal explained. “Fulfillment of not only the monetary transaction you do by buying a product, but also fulfilment in terms of like the engagement you have with a brand, or the aura of a brand.”
      “This, of course, being in Miami Design District led to the idea of creating a space that is adjustable and transformable over time,” Bantal continued. “We should be able to kind of compress the retail parts to almost like a storage element in the store, and open the store to a kind of variety of cultural events.”

      Located at 127 NE 41 Street, the two-storey store is fronted with an opaque polycarbonate wall on the ground floor that can be pushed back, squeezing the storage of the apparel to the rear and opening the front to the street.
      “You almost push everything that is retail and compress it in the space behind and then of course, ultimately it ends up in storage,” said Bantal. “While the space in front of that facade is completely open and free and can be used for any function.”
      Above the moveable wall is the word Shop with a red cross in front – a tongue-in-cheek nod to the concept behind the project.
      “This is the first Off White store to have a facade you know, that street level so the expression, the signage, you know, as the words Shop is a shop, but then has like, an X through the middle, and it’s very, like monolithic,” said Abloh. “The face of the concept is expressed on the facade.”

      Inside, the team aimed to continue to the theme of the fulfilment centre through a stripped-back industrial aesthetic – including floors rendered in lightly stained concrete, walls lined in corrugated metal and mesh ceiling panels.
      Off-White apparel will be displayed on either stainless steel shelving or black marquina and white Carrara marble rails. All the furniture is placed on wheels or is collapsible so it can be moved about to accommodate events.
      The pared-back style acts as a backdrop to a series of artworks that will be installed in the store and the bold electric blue stair that leads to the first floor. On this level, the brand intends to host more intimate events like dinner parties.

      Abloh, who is also the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection, founded his Off-White brand as a ready-to-wear streetwear label in 2012. He previously teamed up with Bantal to design Figures of Speech, a retrospective exhibition of his career at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA).
      The store joins a number of fashion flagships in Miami Design District, which Craig Robins transformed from a formerly neglected area into the hub for design boutiques, luxury fashion brands and art galleries.
      Others include Joseph, which London firm Sybarite design with a spiral black staircase, Christian Louboutin, which is covered in tree bark, Dior, which has a boutique sheathed in curved white concrete panels, and Tom Ford, which is housed in a pleated concrete shop designed by ArandaLasch.

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      Black staircase twists up Joseph store in Miami Design District

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      London studio Sybarite has designed a store for fashion label Joseph in the Miami Design District to include round balconies, curved railings spiral stairs as a reference to the city’s seaside architecture. A black metal corkscrew staircase is among the details that takes cues from Miami’s seaside architecture dating back to the 1940s and 50s.

      Featuring contrasting white polished-marble stair treads, it twists through a circular opening to lead from womenswear on the ground floor to menswear and accessories on the first floor.

      Smoked-black glass wraps around the opening with a curved black balustrade adding to the decorative motifs. Sybarite said other details include the irregular wall cutouts that form windows.

      Marking the fashion label’s largest store to date, the 243-square-metre Miami Design District space is among a number the British studio has designed for the fashion label.
      In each, Sybarite follows the theme of opposites common in Joseph apparel with contrasting tones of black and white, and harsh and soft materials.

      “Our designs for Joseph are based on opposites and the unexpected to provide a complete brand experience for the customer,” said Sybarite co-founder Simon Mitchell.
      White-painted walls and concrete floors are a backdrop to black metalwork fitted with LED lighting that forms frames around clothing rails and extends up in an angular form to meet the ceiling.

      Plinths for bags and shoes made from oriented-strand board (OSB), brass and Corian are arranged in groups on an area of the ground floor marked by a brass grid embedded in the concrete floor.

      Tree bark covers Christian Louboutin boutique in Miami Design District

      A pop of colour is provided by the till desk made of Italian green marble, following on from a recurring concept in Jospeph stores in which a different marble from around the world is used.

      Sybarite has also used geometric shapes of softer carpeting, as and rich shearlings and velvet upholstery in the changing rooms, to add a more cosy elements.

      The studio completed the Joseph store in 2018 making the latest addition to the Miami Design District, which property developer Craig Robins transformed from a formerly neglected area into the hub for design boutiques, luxury fashion brands and art galleries.

      Other fashion brands that have opened up architecturally interesting shops in the area include Christian Louboutin, which has a flagship store covered in tree bark, Dior, which has a boutique sheathed in curved white concrete panels, and Tom Ford, which is housed in a pleated concrete shop designed by ArandaLasch.
      Founded in 2002, Sybarite has completed a number of retail and hospitality interiors, including shops for fashion houses Alberta Ferretti and Marni.

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      Collective installs stage in New York ONS Clothing store

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      Architecture firm Collective has inserted a stage with a green curtain for hosting events in the back of the ONS Clothing store in New York City.The flagship location of ONS, a menswear apparel brand, is located on 201 Mulberry Street in New York’s Nolita neighbourhood.
      It is located inside an existing structure situated 1.5 metres below street level that was previously a garage.

      ONS intends to use the stage space for hosting cultural events, such as exhibitions and pop-ups that it says will change regularly.

      Steel railings, ceramic tiles and asphalt flooring are among the references Collective has taken from the streetscape to guide the store’s design.
      To balance the dark colours and textures of the flooring the studio has inserted pops of colour using light blue tiles on the changing room pods and blue and green counter surfaces.

      “The material we used in the store were carefully chosen for the feeling of the street – ceramic tiles, steel ramps, fibre glass objects while their bright array of blue and green colours balance out the crudeness of the black asphalt and steel,” Collective said.
      Pale wood floors and wood panelling cover the walls in the front room of the store, which the studio conceived as a “standalone wooden box”. In the space there are two wood counters for displaying accessories, while rectangular cutouts in the walls to hold clothing racks.

      An asphalt ramp replaced the existing wheelchair lift to create an accessible pathway from the street into the storefront and to the rear of the space where the studio has constructed a large stage.

      Lunya styles Manhattan store like a “glitzy, upscale New York apartment”

      “The ramp allows a natural flow of circulation from a higher point entering the very deep area at the back of the store, and at the same time, its hovering presence performs as an object in space,” the studio added.

      There are several “props” on the stage including blue- and white-tiered shelving units, curved plinths for displaying products and potted plants, added as a decorative element.
      Angular green drapes attached to a steel rack on the white ceiling and wrap around the space to form an adjustable divider. When closed the fabric curtains extend 30 metres forming a backdrop for the retail displays.

      “Together with the rearrangement of the bright colour display props, the back room area of the ONS,” it continued.
      “Flagship is immediately domesticated and activated into a stage for events, with a light touch of living room like domesticity and comfort.”

      Collective is a studio that practices architecture, interiors and exhibition design founded in 2015.
      It is led by Betty Ng, Chi Yan Chan, Juan Minguez and Katja Lam and has offices in Hong Kong, Madrid, San Francisco and New York.

      Los Angeles clothing brand Lunya also has a retail space in Nolita that takes cues from “upscale New York” apartments, while other stores in the city include a jewellery store in SoHo.
      Photography is by Eric Petschek.

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    • 113 Shares199 Views

      Studio Collective revitalises modernist LA tower for Hotel June

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      Los Angles practice Studio Collective has renovated a mid-century building in the city designed by modernist architect Welton Becket in the 1960s to create a laid-back hotel.Hotel June is a 250-room property in a white, 12-storey tower designed by Los Angeles architect Welton Becket in 1968.

      Becket built a number of modernist buildings in the city, including the rounded Capitol Records Building, Koreatown’s Equitable Life Building skyscraper and the Los Angeles Music Center’s Ahmanson Theater near Frank Gehry’s metallic Walt Disney Concert Hall.

      This building, which is in Los Angeles’ beachside community of Playa Del Rey on Lincoln Boulevard, was previously another hotel before it was overhauled by Studio Collective.
      While the exterior was left intact, the interiors are refreshed with many built-in oak pieces, terrazzo floors and woven accents. Pink and green details add a pop of colour.

      The interiors have “a sense of the new and dynamic through coastal influences and a true California spirit” said the studio. The hotel features a pared-back feeling with natural materials and subtle use of colour.

      A lobby has cream terrazzo floors, a wood-clad ceiling and a bright painting on a wall designed by Brooklyn artist Alex Proba. Becket’s granddaughter, Alexandra Becket, also created wallpapers for other areas of the hotel.
      Hotel rooms have white walls, woven carpeting and a mixture of modernist and more contemporary furniture pieces, including Hem sofas. Bright blue and grey are integrated into the suites for visual contrast.

      “Hotel June is at once airy and cosy, blending clean lines and warm natural woods, earthy finishes, and custom furnishings,” the studio said.

      Lush courtyards surround 1 Hotel West Hollywood in Los Angeles

      White oak closets, custom platform beds and wooden daybeds are intended to evoke mid‐century designs, like those by Charles and Ray Eames and relate to the building’s history.

      “Guestrooms and corridors play with colour-blocking geometries (that recall the work of local mid-century industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames),” Studio Collective said.
      Bathrooms have black fixtures and showers are clad in small, square tiles in grey with dark grout.

      In the hotel’s restaurant and sitting area, glass walls are shaded by slatted oak wood screens to help filter natural sunlight. A white, curved sofa and a large woven light fixture decorate the lounge, while the dining area has dark terrazzo floors and wood furniture.

      Hotel June is complete with an outdoor swimming pool, patio, an outdoor bar and restaurant, a fire pit and indoor gym.
      The property, which is called Hotel June to reflect new beginnings and California’s year-round summer sensibility, is the brainchild of Proper Hospitality co-founders Brian De Lowe and Brad Korzen.

      The Proper hotels in California, which are designed by Kelly Wearstler, include Santa Monica Proper with a similarly relaxed style and San Francisco Proper overflowing with colourful art and furniture.
      Hotel June joins a number of hotels recently completed in Los Angeles, like Ace Hotel, the West Hollywood Edition Hotel by Ian Schrager and John Pawson, Arts District Firehouse Hotel and 1 Hotel West Hollywood.
      Photography is by The Ingalls.

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      New York hair salon Hawthorne Studio is designed for social distancing

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      Wooden frames, moveable styling stations and plants are used to encourage social distancing in this New York hair salon, which local studio BoND designed during the coronavirus pandemic. BoND, led by architecture duo Noam Dvir and Daniel Rauchwerger, began working on the design of Hawthorne Studio in January this year, just a few months before
      The post New York hair salon Hawthorne Studio is designed for social distancing appeared first on Dezeen. More

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      Brooklyn hotel bedrooms converted into offices for remote workers

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      Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel has teamed up with workplace designer Industrious to create rentable offices in its guest suites to cater to those who are working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. With many offices still closed due to the city’s coronavirus lockdown regulations, the Industrious at Wythe Hotel project is intended to offer remote workers with access to flexible, clean and well-equipped workspaces.

      Available for rent by the day, each office is located in one of the Williamsburg hotel’s former loft-style bedrooms with access to a private outdoor space. They are designed to cater to up to four people with Wi-Fi, access to printing services and a smart TV.

      Bedroom furnishings are replaced by sit or stand wood desks and rexford chairs from furniture rental provider Feather, and black metal table lamps.
      The finishes complement the room’s industrial aesthetic of exposed concrete floors and brick walls.

      “Together with Industrious, we are offering remote workers a safe and comfortable place to be productive and escape the confinements of their apartments for a moment,” said Wythe Hotel owner Peter Lawrence.

      Offices after pandemic will “balance physical and virtual work” says Perkins and Will interior design director

      Industrious at Wythe Hotel provides an example of the way that traditional working lifestyles could be disrupted following the pandemic.
      In its earlier stages, Dezeen editor Tom Ravenscroft said “the great work-from-home experiment” would mean remote working would no longer be unusual.

      “The companies that best navigate the future of work are going to be the ones that put choices in their employees’ hands, including the choice of where and how they do their job best,” said Industrious co-founder Jamie Hodari.
      “At Industrious, we think this is just one example of the types of innovation you’ll begin to see in our industry and beyond.”

      Other architects and designers have similarly forecasted ways that offices will change. British interior designer Sevil Peach said they will get smaller, while Form4 Architecture co-founder Paul Fero believes that cubicles will become more prevalent.
      Perkins and Will interior design director Meena Krenek said offices will balance “physical and virtual” work and proposed physical spaces for meetings and large gatherings. Global firm Woods Bagot also created diagrams of workplaces during coronavirus that merge working from home and office.

      Wythe Hotel has made the office spaces available until 31 August. The boutique hotel provided accommodation for medical workers from Woodhull Hospital in Bushwick and NYU Langone Hospital in Sunset Park during the height of the city’s pandemic, an experience it said has enabled them to develop safe practices.
      “By working in collaboration with doctors and nurses on-property during the shutdown, our staff is well-equipped to ensure that all guests are staying in a healthy environment,” it said.

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      Farnsworth House installation replicates Edith Farnsworth's original decor

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      Farnsworth House, the glass house designed by Mies van der Rohe in Illinois, has been redecorated for an installation to feature furnishings and personal belongings of its original client Edith Farnsworth.Edith Farnsworth’s Country House is the centrepiece of an exhibition series called Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered that explores the house’s namesake.
      The installation marks the first time in over 50 years the all-glass residence raised above ground by pilotis is furnished with Farnsworth’s original decor.

      “The Farnsworth House is known around the world as Mies’s ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ (total work of art), but that’s a false history and one that largely ignores the home’s namesake, Dr Edith Farnsworth,” said Farnsworth House executive director Scott Mehaffey.

      For the installation the Farnsworth House and the National Trust for Historic Preservation referenced old photographs of the space taken by Hedrich-Blessing, André Kertész and Werner Blaser. These date back to when Farnsworth occupied it to replicate the design of the space as it would have appeared in 1955.
      Farnsworth, a celebrated research physician, commissioned Van der Rohe to design the country house completed along the Fox River, in Plano, Illinois in 1951.

      While Farnsworth lived there in the 1950s to 60s the house was decorated with her preferred taste of Scandinavian and Italian furniture from designers such as Florence Knoll, Jens Risom, Bruno Mathsson and Franco Albini and with Asian antiques.

      In 1970 the residence was sold to British real estate mogul Baron Peter Palumbo, who outfitted the house with pieces by Van der Rohe and his grandson, Dirk Lohan. These are the furnishings typically on display in the space.
      “For Edith Farnsworth, it was a weekend house – for Peter Palumbo, it was an architectural monument: two fundamentally different viewpoints,” Mehaffey said.

      Geometry of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House illuminated with red lasers

      “So through this installation, we experience the Farnsworth House as the client actually occupied the space – and I think this gives us a much better sense of who she was as a person, and what the house meant to her.”
      In the main living area, which opens out to the two lifted terraces, there is a wood dining table with white metal legs, a black and white rug with a geometric pattern and two curvy lounge chairs with woven straps.

      The centre of the house is occupied by a large rectangular structure used to divide the space and house its mechanics and two bathrooms. One length of the volume is fronted with the kitchen, while the opposite side is furnished with a daybed and chairs that face a small fireplace.

      The bedroom is located at one end of the wood volume and is partitioned by an office tucked into the corner of the house.
      A glass desk with crossed legs overlooks the green landscape in the workspace. On top of the work surface there is a replica of Farnsworth’s typewriter, a framed family photograph and books and on the ground next to the table is her medical briefcase.

      Most of the furnishings on display are commercially-sold reproductions of Farnsworth’s original pieces, while the wardrobe, daybed and Asian slipper chairs are custom-built replicas.
      In addition to the furniture pieces the installation also showcases personal belongings Farnsworth is known to have owned, including potted plants, dish ware, linens, a violin, and a typewriter.

      “We’ve personalised the installation with replicas of her violin, her typewriter, her books, family photos, monogrammed towels and other personal effects – to help conjure her presence,” Mehaffey said.
      Edith Farnsworth Reconsidered and its components will continue through December 2021 with a VR tour and a number of other programmes in the on-site galleries, including an exhibition that focuses on Farnsworth’s life, career and hobbies.

      “Related programmes and events will also celebrate Edith Farnsworth’s life and times,” Mehaffey added. “All of this places the Farnsworth House in a broader, richer context than ever before – it’s no longer ‘All about Mies.'”
      The Farnsworth House opened to the public in 2004 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

      To highlight the house’s unusual geometries and history Iker Gil and Luftwerk projected red lasers across the building and surrounding property. In 2014 there was a proposal to lift the structure with hydraulic jacks to avoid the region’s flooding, however, the system was never implemented.
      Photography is by William Zbaren.

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