SOM to Debut Furniture, Kelly Wearstler Serves Up a Cocktail Lair, and More News

By Alia Akkam and Mel Studach

From significant business changes to noteworthy product launches, there’s always something new happening in the world of design. In this biweekly roundup, AD PRO has everything you need to know.

The Davis Allen Lounge chair, an archival design by SOM for the Inland Steel Building in Chicago

The 66 chair, a Nicos Zophragros-designed chair featured in the SOM archives

Form Portfolios illuminates SOM furniture designs

For decades the New York architecture, engineering, and urban planning firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has crafted such innovative buildings as Lever House, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), and One World Trade Center. SOM interiors are equally memorable, awash in custom lighting and furniture that for the first time are being introduced to the market via a multiyear partnership with Form Portfolios. The Rhode Island–based company, which has a studio in Copenhagen, amplifies the legacies of such architects and designers as Louis Kahn, Gianfranco Frattini, and Charles and Ray Eames, and will do the same for SOM, dipping into its vast archives to elevate product designs from bygone talents, including Davis Allen, Gordon Bunshaft, Natalie de Blois, Walter Netsch, and Charles Pfister.

AD PRO Hears…

…Nathan Williams, lifestyle entrepreneur and founder of Kinfolk, has been named the inaugural creative director-in-residence at Portland-based lighting and furniture company Schoolhouse. The role will be focused on reshaping the Schoolhouse brand in both content and creative direction.

Widow’s Walk, which opens later this week at Winter Street Gallery in Edgartown

Charlap Hyman & Herrero curates exhibition at Winter Street Gallery on Martha’s Vineyard

Adorning the roofs of many a Martha’s Vineyard abode are widow’s walks, railed viewing platforms from which wives of yore purportedly awaited the return of their seafaring husbands. That mingling of optimism and anguish is captured in Widow’s Walk, a newly opened exhibition (through August 27) at Winter Street Gallery in Edgartown, Massachusetts, curated by AD100 practice Charlap Hyman & Herrero. Works from Carmen Almon, Carlo Bugatti, Alphonse Cytere, Leonor Fini, Pieter de Grebber, Camille Henrot, Jenny Jesky, Matthew Leifheit, Thad Lovett, Eli Ping, Miroslav Tichý, and Andra Ursuta embrace a spectrum of materials, from resin and canvas to bronze. They are displayed amid walls, floors, and ceilings that bear smoke damage, nodding to both the notion of loss and a far less romantic advantage to constructing a widow’s walk: the ease of tamping down chimney fires.

Martin Brudnizki and Nick Jeanes are among the 14 talents designing quilts for Nantucket by Design exhibition Threads of Life.

Martin Brudnizki, Commune, and more craft quilt designs for Nantucket by Design

Nantucket by Design returns next week with a queue of designer-led panels, cocktail parties, and the anchoring antiques, art, and design market, the Nantucket Show. Among the sure-to-be convivial events will be Threads of Life, a quilt exhibition for which Christopher Farr Cloth tapped 14 industry notables—Commune, Frank de Biasi, Noz Nozawa, And Objects by Martin Brudnizki and Nick Jeanes, Yabu Pushelburg, Mitch Owens, Kit Kemp, Kate Blee, Fogo Island Workshop, Atelier Ace, Mally Skok, Eleish van Breems, and Kathleen Hay—to design one-of-a-kind quilts using cuttings from the British fabric house. Proceeds from the designs, which will be on view at historic site Greater Light from August 2–5, will benefit the Nantucket Historical Association.

Jean-Michael Othoniel: The Flowers of Hypnosis at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Jean-Michel Othoniel works enliven the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

More than a decade after his retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, contemporary French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel is back in the borough with The Flowers of Hypnosis, an exhibition (through October 22) of six large-scale sculptures that meditate on nature. A kinetic rose installation invites conversation in the Fragrance Garden, two mirror bead works planted atop pools play with reflection on the Lily Pool Terrace, and a trifecta of lotus-flower-inspired pieces rendered in gold leaf and stainless steel are strewn throughout the hypnotic Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden.

Kirna Zabête’s new Steven Gambrel–designed shop in SoHo

Kirna Zabête settles into new Steven Gambrel–designed Soho digs

Edgy, luxe womenswear from celebrated and on-the-rise designers alike has reeled shoppers into Kirna Zabête since the first boutique opened in New York’s Soho neighborhood in 1999. After nearly a decade on Broome Street, former fashion editor Beth Buccini has relocated her vibrant downtown retail emporium (there are also stores on the Upper East Side and in East Hampton, Palm Beach, and Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania) to a 6,000-square-foot space at 160 Mercer Street, close to the original. Like the Madison Avenue shop, the interiors come courtesy of local AD100 designer Steven Gambrel, who glamorously mixed a swath of antiqued pink glass with Venetian plaster, padded velvet, and red lacquered chandeliers.

The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain joins forces with nonprofit The World Around

Through a lineup of thought-provoking events, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain promotes bold architecture and design across the globe. The World Around, an itinerant nonprofit platform launched in 2020 by curator Beatrice Galilee and financier and art collector Diego Marroquin, also centers its mission on championing progressive contemporary architecture. Both organizations have come together to roll out three public programs in three different cities, beginning in Milan with In Focus: Radical Repair on September 28 at Triennale Milano. The evening of conversations with Yasmeen Lari, Jeanne Gang, and Joseph Grima will be held in tandem with the exhibition Siamo Foresta (through October 29).

All eyes on rugs! Launches from Beata Heuman, Elena Frampton, and Ward + Gray

As a child, London-based AD100 designer Beata Heuman was transfixed by her grandmother Gurli’s old floral-print rug that hung on a wall of the family’s farmhouse in southern Sweden. That enchanting memory has now sparked the debut of the 100% wool Gurli rug in Heuman’s Shoppa collection, a versatile flatweave in charcoal and chestnut colorways featuring an array of sunny blooms framed by a garland. Meanwhile, Elena Frampton of New York studio Frampton Co teamed up with the Rug Company to design Undercover (on display through tomorrow at Exhibition the Barn in Bridgehampton, New York, as part of the Optic Garden showcase of rugs curated by Frampton for the brand), a hand-knotted wool and silk creation emblazoned with soft blue and ivory botanicals that gets the three-dimensional trompe l’oeil treatment.

Beata Heuman’s Gurli rug

Undercover by Elena Frampton and The Rug Company

Christie Ward and Staver Gray stand in front of the Autumn rug, one of 7 designs in their rug launch.

Rugs are also the latest creative endeavor from the hospitality-driven New York practice Ward + Gray. Founders Christie Ward and Staver Gray have imagined seven different styles, all of them hand-knotted in India or Pakistan, for the studio’s inaugural product launch. Blue Moon, Bergamot, Forsythia, and Terracotta by the Sea flaunt an appealingly well-worn finish, but Winter, Autumn, and Dune are distinguished by New Zealand wool overlays reminiscent of embroidered gowns.

The Shade Store expands its Alexa Hampton Designer collection

Become an AD PRO member and save 20% on the annual offer

A dreamy palette of blue, green, ivory, gray, and sand defines the quartet of Alexa Hampton–designed fabrics that the Shade Store unveils today for drapery, Roman shades, cornices, and pillows. The AD100 New York designer invigorated classic, embroidered motifs for this range, leading to the snaking Cloud Chain that references 1970s Pop art, the cascading Leaf Frame that pulls from nature, the striped Baluster, and Roman Fret, a regal, abstracted Greek key.

Cosentino ramps up its Silestone portfolio

Pioneering HybriQ technology, produced using 99% recycled water, 100% renewable electric energy, and a minimum of 20% recycled raw materials, is the backbone of Cosentino’s Silestone collection. Le Chic and Urban Crush, two recently introduced offerings, expand Silestone’s sustainable footprint with timeless designs. Le Chic, melding metallic touches with rich veining, captures glamorous Parisian and Victorian sensibilities, while gray-toned Urban Crush is an ode to the industrial style of design and its liberal use of sleek materials like concrete and bronze.

AD PRO Hears…

Nayla Kai Saroufim for Ashley Stark Home

…that a new launch from Ashley Stark Home will have you saying OMG! Designed in collaboration with Lebanese Canadian artist Nayla Kai Saroufim, the wall-hung resin sculptures are available in metallic shades of Silver chrome, Icy Blue chrome, Gold chrome, and Gold papers.

…as of this week, legacy New York design shop ABC Carpet & Home is expanding its custom sofa program online, where clients can select from more than 80 color and fabric options for upholstering sofas, chairs, beds, and more from the label’s exclusive Cobble Hill collection.

The Quill Room, now open at Austin Proper Hotel

The Quill Room

The Quill Room

Kelly Wearstler designs wondrous cocktail bar at Austin Proper Hotel

Fans of Kelly Wearstler’s chic yet laidback Austin Proper Hotel already revel in the libations served at Goldie’s, the Peacock Mediterranean Grill, and rooftop La Piscina. Now they can bolster their nightlife routine with a French Negroni at MML Hospitality’s newest venture, the Quill Room. At this music-centric cocktail lair on the second floor, Wearstler melded retro Parisian vibes with punches of Texan audacity. An enveloping golden wall covering based on a design from the Arts & Crafts movement is paired with stitched leather, terra-cotta-hued textiles, vintage furnishings, and a custom Edelweiss piano, while flashes of compelling neon brighten the wood-and-metal-bedecked bar.