A Panorama of New Designs

New York Times

09-05-2025

Swiss Furniture Company Finds New Manhattan Home
Vitra has been a nomad in New York City, occupying three different spaces since leaving its lower Ninth Avenue showroom almost a decade ago. Those wanderings will end this week when the 75-year-old Swiss furniture company unveils its new, eye-popping Manhattan home: a Chinatown loft with a huge (16-by-65-foot) wall of windows looking out to the gateway of the Manhattan Bridge.
Nora Fehlbaum, the granddaughter of Vitra's founders, Willi and Erika Fehlbaum, and the company's current chief executive, said she was seeking a 'similar vibe' to that of the Meatpacking district, circa 2003, when looking for a space. 'Something not so obvious. Something to be discovered. Something that feels really New York but also a bit obscure,' she said.
This showroom, which formerly housed the Jing Fong dim sum restaurant, indeed feels like a discovery. It's on the third floor, and the elevator is in a vestibule in the middle of an interior alleyway where many tenants are restaurants (most notably Joe's Shanghai).
Ms. Fehlbaum recalled she felt 'overwhelmed' when she first visited the space, as it is more than 6,000 square feet, with soaring ceilings. She enlisted the architect Serge Drouin (a grandson of the French designer Jean Prouvé) to work with Vitra's in-house design team to create a flexible environment. It is, naturally, quite minimal, with curtains suspended from rails in lieu of walls, a long bar that doubles as a communal table and some vibrant blue tiles from the recently dismantled Edgar J. Kaufmann Conference Center, designed by Alvar Aalto.
The furniture offerings have been accessorized with New York-centric touches including a cast-iron pigeon bought locally and decorative pillows by John Sohn, a Brooklyn designer. The showroom is at 46 Bowery, third floor; vitra.com. — RIMA SUQI
A Mansion Museum Celebrates Its Maker
The protean architect and tastemaker Alexander Jackson Davis catered to the 19th century's ambitious American arts patrons with Americanized versions of turrets and domes from European castles. 'Alexander Jackson Davis: Designer of Dreams,' an exhibition surveying his buildings and objects, opens May 23 at Lyndhurst, a marble mansion-turned-museum in Tarrytown, N.Y.
Mr. Davis designed Lyndhurst, on 67 sloping acres at the Hudson River's banks, from the 1830s to the 1860s. It was one of dozens of private and public buildings that he ornamented with crenellations, faceted bay windows, quatrefoils, gargoyles and spiky finials. He drew inspiration from centuries-old Gothic architecture that he read about in novels and saw in book illustrations. (He spent most of his life in the New York City vicinity and never traveled overseas.) He outfitted rooms with his own inventive furniture designs, including chairs with backs formed from openwork petals and cloven hoofs on flared legs.
For his newly rich customers, the commissions publicly attested to their worldliness. In tumultuous antebellum times, 'there was an insecurity about being an American,' said David Scott Parker, an architect and Davis expert and collector who is a major lender to the Lyndhurst show.
The curatorial team has reunited Mr. Davis's sketches with the actual objects and vintage photos of their first homes. Lyndhurst still has almost all of its original Davis pieces and is among the few of his buildings that are publicly accessible.
Howard Zar, Lyndhurst's executive director, said that by synthesizing so much eclectic source material, Davis was a forerunner of contemporary artists: 'Appropriation and sampling, we think that's something new, but it's been going on forever.' The show will be on view through Sept. 23;lyndhurst.org. — EVE M. KAHN
A Supportive Perch From Ralph Pucci
'It feels like a UFO that hasn't landed yet,' observed Kevin Walz of the Numino love seat, one of five upholstered pieces in a new collection he's launching later this month at the Manhattan design and art gallery Ralph Pucci International.
The seating began as a personal project for the 75-year-old designer and artist, who suffered from back problems and found 'Western' furniture not supportive. At a glance, it seems Numino's low silhouette would be guilty of the same charge. But Mr. Walz insisted, 'They are supportive, not squishy, so easy to get in and out of.'
The Numino family also includes three types of tables: side, coffee and console (the last in two sizes). Unlike their low-slung, opaque siblings, the tables are leggy and transparent. 'They have a service quality, with a lip to catch spills, like the most elegant TV trays, popular in the 1950s,' noted Mr. Walz of the design. Made from cast resin and stainless steel, the tables are produced in the same Ralph Pucci workroom in which the company's artful mannequins were once manufactured.
The pieces will be introduced on May 19 at 44 West 18th Street; RalphPucci.com. — RIMA SUQI
At the Triennale di Milano, a Focus on Inequality
For over a century now, the Triennale di Milano has been one of the headier — if also one of the more confounding — fixtures of the global cultural calendar.
Previous editions of the irregular, sometimes-more-like-quadrennial art and design festival have pioneered experimental projects, including an entire new neighborhood in Milan (in 1947), and served as early platforms for future luminaries like the Italian architect Aldo Rossi (in 1973).
Opening on Tuesday, the show's 24th installment promises to be no less varied and ambitious: Under the heading 'Inequalities,' this triennial will feature an array of subexhibitions including a spotlight on affordable housing curated by the Norman Foster Foundation; a survey exploring the intersection of bacteria and buildings, 'emphasizing how they have been deeply intertwined from Neolithic times to today'; and a selection of historical portraiture of the Milanese upper crust dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries.
Participants from over 40 countries will be on hand at the Triennale's Palazzo dell'Arte, a stately building in Milan's central park, to explore inequity in all its guises. Through the summer and fall, a full calendar of events and talks (an immersive musical performance, a roundtable on climate change) will continue the investigation, trying to locate the rips in our tattered social fabric and figure out what, exactly, can be done to mend them. On view through Nov. 9; triennale.org. — IAN VOLNER