Germane Barnes Creates a Carnival-Themed, Multipart Installation in Miami

When we last wrote about architect Germane Barnes, it was for his work in the 2020 exhibition “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His star has catapulted skyward since, earning both the Architectural League Prize in 2021 and the Rome Prize last year.

6 Highlights from the 18th Edition of Design Miami/

The boom in the number of design collectors, especially in recent years, is evident at design fairs and Design Miami/ is a sector force. During the opening of its 18th edition, the fair’s CEO, Jennifer Roberts, noted the rising interest around collectable design, particularly among younger demographics. “The design market has never been better,” she told Interior Design. “There are new people coming to the market and they’re building thoughtful collections that tell stories.” At Design Miami/, 50 exhibitors and intimate scale presentations in the Curio section are housed inside a tent at Pride Park, across from Art Basel Miami Beach. As the “first full fair after the pandemic,” says Roberts, noting the smaller version that took place last year, it’s sure to impress. The 2022 theme, “The Golden Age: Looking to the Future” is reflected in works that reference tradition with a boldness towards new visual lexicons and materials.  

From U.S.-based powerhouses such as R& Company, The Future Perfect, and Moderne Gallery to international fixtures Nilufar Gallery, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, and Galerie Maria Wettergren, the industry’s key players are peppered throughout the aisles. Curio also offers experimental presentations with younger galleries, such as Superhouse and Emma Scully Gallery, as well as single designer presentations by Harry Nuriev and Objects of Common Interest, which promise intriguing explorations on material and forms.

“Whimsy is a running thread among the booths,” Roberts adds, noting the terms “craftsmanship” and “handmade,” as strong elements on display. Winners of the fair’s annual Best in Show award also were announced: New York-based Magen H Gallery, which focuses on mid-century French design, and London’s Sarah Myerscough Gallery, known for its emphasis on craftsmanship, shared the prize. 

See Interior Design’s Design Miami/ highlights, on view through December 4, 2022. 

Atelier Courbet

New York-based Atelier Courbet created a booth that radiates with its earthy tones and seamless blend of organic forms in furniture and objects. Emma Donnersberg, Hamza Kadiri, Abel Cárcamo, Jonathan Hansen, Gianluca Pacchioni, and Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance unite over a marquetry flooring designed by Oscar Ono. All exhibiting pieces, created for the gallery’s fair presentation, deliver experimentations on material and silhouette. Cárcamo and Donnersberg’s table series Penzai recalls majestic trees in rain forests as well as fungi. Each table sprouts two or three biomorphic surfaces from its thick body, blending function with sculptural experimentation. The two designers have modeled the forms in France and produced the tables at the French bronze foundry Fonderie Fusions in Auvergne.

Superhouse

Superhouse gallery invites visitors to plunge into a phantasmic bedroom of colors and materials with a quartet of artists and designers—Sean Gerstley, Ellen Pong, Ryan Decker and Kim Mupangilaï—from the Chinatown-based gallery’s programming. The gallery founder Stephen Markos nods to the atmosphere of a bedroom in Dream Room, featuring a six-foot tall armory designed by Sean Gerstley, made out of chunky ceramic blocks, as well as a queen-size bedroom frame. Ellen Pong’s nightstand which replicates a dolphin riding a horse taps both onto the booth’s bedroom theme and Markos’s nod to the dream state.

Twenty First Gallery

Tribeca-based Twenty First Gallery presents a grouping of eight designers from its roster, delivering a variety of materials and types of furniture. Polish-born, London-based designer Marcin Rusak’s signature furniture technique of soaking real flowers into resin is represented with a white coffee table that holds romantic fall flora, forever suspended inside bio-resin and suspended with lacquered oak. Another coffee table yet in a completely different visual radiance is by François Corbeau, made with silver mirrored bronze and gleaming throughout its sleek surface and liquid corners with a mercurial fluidity. 

Emma Scully Gallery

Another striking Curio presentation is by Emma Scully Gallery in which an all-women designer presentation, titled Reflecting Women, includes pieces by Jane Atfield, Rooms Studio, Bec Brittain, and Jenny Min. The scene-stealer is Brittain’s moving light fixtures Parachipers series, titled Zora 1 and James 2. With their cast aluminum bases with black lacquer finish, the parachute shades in textile, silk thread, brass, and gold-filled chain blow in air, pulling the gallery-goers into the celebration of woman design. 

Objects of Common Interest curated by Mr. Lawrence

Greece- and Brooklyn-based design duo Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis, collectively known as Objects of Common Interest, join the fair this year through the Curio section without a gallery attachment. The duo’s new objects include a freestanding opal mirror that reaches 76 inches in height. A fluid form combines the sensation of melting with rigidness of acrylic opal, produced by the duo at their studio outside of Athens. The same material also embodies a light fixture with a rather more sculptural figures that is both otherworldly and rock-like. The rod-form light bulb is stuck within the vertical form, washing the opal’s liquid surface with illumination. 

Maestro Dobel Artpothecary’s presentation with Clásicos Mexicanos

Tequila makers Maestro Dobel brings its Artpothecary series, spearheaded by its creative director Alejandra Martinez, to Design Miami/ through a collaboration with Mexico City-based furniture brand Clásicos Mexicanos. This year’s presentation includes furniture that uses original designs of the late Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta from his Vallartacollection which was the furniture used at various locations of Hotel Camino Real in the early 1970s. The chairs are made out of pine wood frames and woven palm seats, and they decorated the hotel chain’s locations in Puerto Vallarta, Cancún, and Ixtapa. Besides the visual abundance, the booth also taps into the visitors’ taste buds with the offering of a selection of cocktails that pay homage to the 70s’ Mexican Golden Age in design. 

Brandi Howe Joins Jasmin Larian Hekmat’s Cult Gaia for Miami Design District Pop-Up

Before founding Cult Gaia, Jasmin Larian Hekmat attended New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology while interning for notables like Narciso Rodriguez and Jason Wu. Since launching in 2012, Hekmat has grown Cult Gaia from its coveted Ark Bag with a waitlist of thousands into a complete collection featuring ready to wear, accessories, footwear, and swim inspired by femininity, nature, and architecture.

She tasked Brandi Howe, who she knew through Howe’s own fashion label, with her 2,000-square-feet Cult Gaia Miami pop-up. Its garden theme features displays built of different stones, concrete statues, and planters. Rather than blooming flowers and greenery, the blooms of the Cult Gaia garden are the displayed accessories and fashion pieces of the collection.  The cash-wrap is built of drywall coated in Venetian plaster with an extension of layered step planters with concrete stepping stones to display the sunglasses.

“My perspective was to present the Cult Gaia collection through different forms of matter,” Howe says. “The chrome elements represent liquid, while the stones inlaid into the ground and forming part of the pedestals represent solid. By contrast, the clothing, bags, shoes and other accessories of the brand are constantly changing and, like plant matter, I see them as the elements which give life in the space to their more static surroundings.”

See the South Beach Lifeguard Towers in a New Light in Tommy Kwak’s Book 

It was 1995 when William Lane Architect was commissioned to design five lifeguard towers to replace the ones in South Beach that had been destroyed by Hurricane Andrew. The colorful, art deco–influenced structures were popular, yet it was another 20 years before the city came back to the Miami Beach–based firm to create six prototypes to replace most of the lifeguard towers serving the 8 1/2 mile stretch of Atlantic Ocean coastline.

It was 2019 when photographer Tommy Kwak traveled from his home in Montclair, New Jersey, to Miami Beach and first saw the pink tower on 17th Street—the aha moment that sparked his project to catalog all 38 towers and turn them into a book. “I was captivated by its electric palette and solitary form in the early morning light. I then photographed a few more towers and was hooked,” says Kwak, whose Palm series was available for the first time as NFTs at Art Basel in Switzerland last month. “My goal was to celebrate a kind of ephemeral beauty and, at the same time, transform the entities into more graphic forms,” he says of the images he took during three trips over three years, each shoot starting before 6AM and stretching into the evenings. “My ideal conditions were on days that were overcast and drizzly, so the backdrop of sea and sky were as minimal as possible for the towers to stand out. Plus there were less people around in light rain.”

On Kickstarter, Kwak raised the $16,000 needed to enable Brooklyn-based Blurring Books to publish the hardcover, due out this fall. In the meantime, limited-edition prints are available through Clic.

Compac Opens its New Salon in Miami

The Spanish engineered stone maker Compac celebrated the opening of its new exhibition space in Miami last week and offered a look at its newest quartz surfaces by Israeli designer Arik Levy. Rather than a showroom, the company calls the new space a salon to reflect the artistry and craftsmanship behind its innovative product development.

CEO Paco Sanchis was on hand to talk about the ideas and inspiration behind Levy’s newest products, including Ice Max Black, Ice Ink, Ice Gold, Ice Viola and Ice Green, which were inspired by the way light reflects off of fractured arctic glaciers. A selection of sculptural new kitchen and bath products also were showcased at the event, including Quartzrock and Waterstorm—a vanity and washbasin designed by Levy—and Rhea, and an outdoor kitchen island designed by Sicilian architect Elisa Ossino. A solo cellist set a sophisticated tone as Prosecco, blinis and pulpo were passed among attendees.

During the event, Sanchis emphasized the company’s longstanding commitment to sustainable practices, including its use of rainwater, recycled post-consumer materials, and natural dyes, as well as its unique approach to biomimicry. By working with designers and artists, the team has explored what Sanchis calls “a new meta nature that relies on innovation to explore the tension between what exists today and the possibilities of tomorrow.” The party continued with drinks and classic Spanish fare at a gathering space near the company’s adjoining warehouse amid lively sounds of Latin jazz musicians.

10 Questions With… Madelynn Ringo

Interior Design: What was the first space you were in that you understood to be designed?

Madelynn Ringo: I grew up in Kentucky. My mother was a painter, and an artist, and a teacher. Every wall in my house was painted a vibrant, different color. I learned at a very young age how to be both an independent thinker and use visual ideas to communicate things. I also studied the violin. Those experiences of music and color certainly set me up for risk-taking as an entrepreneur. I went to art school at the University of Kentucky, and one day just sort of passed through the architecture school. I saw a student model, and it was love at first sight. I saw it was like an abstract sculpture, about light and form, and I remember a huge light bulb going off. 

ID: Do you think growing up in Kentucky informed your aesthetic?

MR: In Bardstown, there was one promenade of streets where you could feel the buildings, each one has a different façade and they’re sort of mashed up and placed well within their compositions. My father was in the bourbon industry, and there were all brick houses with prominent forms. It’s a very catholic community, and I would perform as a violinist in the churches. So those powerful structures created impactful emotions of people, and those were the types of buildings I grew up having feelings for. And when I signed up for architecture school, I had the grit to work on something until it was perfect. That environment of the school and the critiques was something I was already prepped for, being used to performing in front of people. 

ID: What did you do after graduation?

MR: I pretty much moved to New York right away. I was so enthralled. I felt such a magnetic connection to it. And I did the hustle, and had two very distinct types of professional experiences. The first was at SO – IL, which was very much like a dream job. At that moment, I was inspired by their academic approach to thinking about spaces, and the way they draw buildings—how their drawings were just as significant as the renderings. That was very impactful on me. 

ID: What was the second?

MR: I worked at the Standard Hotel with André Balazs, on the design team, experiencing that world of being an in-house designer for a brand and understanding how important it is when, you’re developing a brand, to think about every little detail. The Standard was incredible at creating culture, that cleverness they had with their copywriting, all the details so considered. The combination of those two experiences, one hyper-focused on materiality and texture and form, and the other creating a 360-degree branded experience, really set my thinking in a certain way. SO – IL was a very small group of people, in an office that didn’t have a strong hierarchy. It encouraged me as a young designer to feel confident speaking my thoughts, and to feel like I really could design the gestures for what might become the final building. I try to replicate that when working with young designers. At the Standard, the team just invited me on for the ride, and let me jump into pretty big projects. Some of the first things I worked on were the redesign of the hotel in Los Angeles, where we worked on a partnership with Susan Sarandon for a pink ping-pong club. I really learned the importance of collaboration, and look for people who have complementary skill sets when I’m putting together internal design teams, or even whole project teams—whether it’s a florist who can bounce off the ideas we have, or the clients themselves who might not have architectural ideas but have creative ideas we can built off of. Rather than feeling like my hand should overpower theirs, I prefer to compliment.

ID: And then you went to Yale?

MR: I knew that I wanted another version of architecture education. I wanted to sort of perfect my knowledge of it. I saw an exhibition at Yale of modelmaking, full of beautiful models made of all sorts of materials, not just balsa wood and chipboard but incredible, sparklingly things. I was like, this is where I want to go. A lot of the drawing I learned at SO – IL was reflected in my studio work at Yale. My renderings were very conceptual, very playful, very material-focused. I was able to explore. And then I worked at a couple of offices back in New York City, including Wendy Evans Joseph. She was an incredible role model. I started to explore this idea of designing experiential spaces, exhibitions that had a little wiggle room to be playful and conceptual. I did some freelance work, and the beauty industry was really booming so a lot of the work happened to be for that.

ID: Did you know the Glossier brand when you began designing their stores?

MR: I’d never even used their makeup before. But the prompt was: We want to make a new store in Miami, and come up with the craziest idea possible. I designed it like a theatrical set. I got to nerd out on the composition of all those Miami Art Deco elevations, mash different facades together, and present it at a scale where the customer can appreciate and engage with it. It connected to the brand when all the facades were dipped in pinks and peaches and had textures. It was a critical moment for me in understanding how you take an architectural idea and relate it to a customer. Every touchpoint is important, from the way they experience the product to the way they feel emotionally connected to a space. And a few years ago, [former Glossier exec] Melissa Eamer reached out to me to let me know she’s starting a new business, Modern Age, which is thinking about beauty and aging through the lens of science. She wants to build spaces that offer in-person treatments, but are different than anything else out there. I had to learn everything I possibly could about that customer journey. What does it feel like to go into a doctor’s office? What does it feel like to sit in the chair? What might make that experience more calming? And who are the competitors in offering these experiences, how do you carve out that brand experience to separate them? I learned all these interesting things about clinical operations, and the types of equipment to purchase. I’m now the head of studio design. 

ID: Why did you start your own firm?

MR: I enjoy the action of building a team, and need the sounding board of other people’s ideas and thoughts. It gives me energy and helps me refine my process. I was in a very lucky situation at the end of 2020, in a moment where you would think nobody was thinking about building retail spaces, but with connections to a few clients who were thinking ahead. It all set itself up quite quickly. I wanted to figure out what my version of an architectural practice might be, write a new playbook for what it means to be an architectural designer. I’m interested in quickly testing things and quickly building things, and that means really fast timelines, which can make the project hard. But the moment they’re built, you get to be in the space and see the successes or failures of those details. So the learning happens faster. 

ID: Studs already had a few stores open when you began collaborating with them, right?

MR: They had gotten their feet wet. They approached me and said: We’ve learned operational stuff that works and doesn’t work. But they wanted to develop a kit of parts that would allow their retail strategy to really take off. The first few months were about really speaking with their team and understanding their product and how it needed to be stored. And then talking with them about the things they wanted to improve on in their customer experience. Some of that was visual merchandizing. Their products are very small and shiny. So there were a lot of discussions around how light and color were interacting and how the jewelry may get lost within certain lighting techniques. And also this was such an interesting discussion: the price tags were bigger than the jewelry. How do you negotiate the hierarchy of the extremely tiny jewelry and a price tag which needed to be legible next to it? Those are some examples of the types of things that we’re exploring. The Studs environment is playful, loud, vibrant, and bold. But how could we find materials that push each location. For Miami, we chose a peachy color. How far can we push a palette so that it looks like the brand but is totally exciting and new for each store? 

ID: How does that differ from your work for Bala and Funny Face Bakery?

MR: I was obsessed with Bala’s products and their forum. I was using them in mood boards for other products. And I just really wanted to design for them, so I just reached out to one of their CEOs on LinkedIn and started a conversation. And it was the perfect time, as they were beginning to think about retail experiences and physical locations. They want it to be a fun place, and their aesthetic perfectly aligned with the way my team and I design spaces. Funny Face came to me, after seeing my work for Glossier. They wanted to grow their retail footprint and hone in on the brand identity through physical space, with bold colors and architectural hints that are sort of memories of classic architecture but feel plastic and playful. It’s a similar problem for each of these clients: you have to understand what celebrates the objects, and tell the story of how they are made.

ID: What’s next for you?

MR: I’m really excited to learn how to run a company. I really want to push this idea of architectural practice into different mediums like set design, or designing a theater. I’m very interested in designing for the bourbon industry and creating interesting customer experiences for brands. It would be like going back in the future, finding a way to go back to some of those roots and designing a space for those environments I was very familiar with as a child.  

IG Workshop Plays With Texture in a Bal Harbour, Miami Home

When influencer Jenny Berger and her husband approached Miami’s IG Workshop to make their Bal Harbour 4,500-square-foot, five-bedroom new build into a home, they weren’t necessarily thinking cozy. “They love spending time at the Four Seasons Hotel at the Surf Club in nearby Surfside,” says firm co-founder Samantha Gallacher. “They wanted to come home to a similar vibe.”

A palette of greens grounded by neutrals serves as the base. Then, Gallacher says, “We were given the directive to push the envelope and play with texture.” This led to extensive use of fluting, from the show-stopping bar to the custom kitchen cabinetry to focal areas of the foyer and living room. To unify the five bathrooms and bonus powder room, she and business partner Renata Vasconez chose different versions of terrazzo and ran them up the walls to create a spa experience.

For the staircase connecting the two stories, Vasconez says, “we were able to use a metal mesh material we had never used before, while cladding the entire framework in white oak. We fell in love with it.” A commissioned tapestry by Mexican artists, she says, “plays up the height.” And the hospitable appeal of the place.

AMLgMATD invoke ‘Tropical Cubism’ for the Museum of Art and Design’s Education Lab in Miami

The Museum of Art and Design at Miami-Dade College’s new Education Lab, a 1,500-square-foot space housed in the Freedom Tower downtown, will offer the community a host of innovative lectures, workshops, and artmaking activities. The space needed to be as forward-thinking and flexible as its curricula, which is why MoAD approached local firm AMLgMATD to conceive its design.

Over the next few years, co-founders Laz Ojalde and Natalie Zlamalova refined not a space, but a style. “We searched for a commonality that would bridge our artistic approaches and principals and that would feel appropriate to exist within the walls of the 1920s-built landmark,” the pair say. “Natalie’s Czech background and admiration for early Czech Cubism & Functionalism and Laz’s love of industrial design and Art Deco, especially the overly stylized Tropical Art Deco found mainly throughout South Florida, were focal to the process. We discussed what if these two different yet somewhat similar styles of decor and function amalgamated and lived on today as a hybrid style called Tropical Cubism?”

The end result fuses bold colors and abstract geometries for a space with reconfigurable furnishings and intriguing finishes, organized into a quartet of arrangements including a main area, children’s area, reading zone, and build/work zone. “Every single piece had to be designed with modularity in mind so that it could be carried in and assembled on site by only a couple of people,” say the design duo. “Tropical Cubism gave us the ability to play creatively with bold angular line work and historic silhouettes. And it allowed us to artistically reinterpret the styles’ functionalities and purpose in this space.” Not to mention offering inspiration to future generations learning in the lab.

BHDM Design Breathes New Life into the Novotel Miami Brickell Hotel

2021 Best of Year Winner for Budget Hotel

The lobby and lounges at this existing hotel had good bones—the ceilings were 19 feet, the windows floor-to-ceiling. But the 4,500 square feet of public spaces lacked “personality and a sense of narrative,” notes principal and creative director Dan Mazzarini of BHDM Design, who quickly, and inexpensively ($173 per square foot to be exact), made amends.

Conceiving of a “sun, sand, surf” theme, he and his team marshalled a peachy palette along with furnishings in rounded shapes that have a “work/live/play vibe.” Costs were kept down with off-the-shelf pieces from the likes of Arteriors, Blu Dot, Frontgate, and Restoration Hardware. Indoor/outdoor chairs resemble rattan but are made of sturdy powder-coated metal, polyamide, and acrylic.

Custom designs came into play, too, such as the cerused-oak bar screen that was inspired by South Beach lifeguard stands but functions as built-in shelving. Likewise, in the textile department, custom-printed ombre sheeting adds softness at windows and in a nook off a lobby entrance, while the underside of the rooftop lounge awning has been printed with a palm-leaf pattern. As for the lobby’s whimsical 12-foot trees mimicking local flora, they’re made of white canvas. Uplit at night, they cast dramatic frondlike shadows across the ceiling. By day, they require no watering—just an occasional dusting.

BHDM Design: Dan Mazzarini; Jennifer Rosenthal

Meyer Davis and OMA Take Home a Best of Year Award for One Park Grove in Miami

2021 Best of Year winner for Domestic Lobby/Amenity

Developer and art collector Jorge Pérez assembled an all-star lineup for the architecture and design of this project, the last of three towers to be built in a Coconut Grove waterfront complex. OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu envisioned the undulating exterior concrete columns, which swell and contract like the trunks of palm trees. Meyer Davis designed the lobby and other public areas, incorporating artwork from Pérez’s private collection. Both architect and designers found inspiration in a 1983 Christo and Jeanne-Claude installation that wrapped islets in Biscayne Bay with hot-pink polypropylene. It influenced how the lobby interiors negotiate the tower’s peanut-shape footprint—pinched at the center with two elevator cores—and multiple grade changes. Similar to the way the islands were encircled with concentric bands of fabric, the designers layered ribbons of stone flooring that radiate outward from the core. “Where those lines converge and intersect, we created ‘islands’ of seating,” senior project manager Sonya Cheng explains. Patterned rugs ground those sitting areas—principal Will Meyer calls them “moments of serenity, the residual between waves”—as they float between the core and the curved glass exterior. “It’s not a traditional layout,” Meyer acknowledges. “It’s really a new language with its own logic, rules, and geometry, but it creates its own sense of space.”

meyer davis: Will Meyer; Gray Davis; Sonya Cheng; Mei Lau; Drew Tucker; Marianne Mordhorst

OMA: Shohei Shigematsu; Scott Abrahams; Matthew Haseltine; Cass Nakashima; Nils Sanderson; Daeho Lee; Matthew Edgardo Davis; Jeremy Kim; Gonzalo Lopez; Pantea Tehrani; Sumit Sahdev; Jun Shimada; Andrew Mack; Miguel Darcy; Betty Fan; Carly Dean; Ahmadreza Schricker; Britt Johnson; Shida Salehi-Esmati; Jackie Woon Bae; Ian Watchorn; Filippo Nanni; Esin Erez; Luke Willis