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Industrial
Furniture Finds a Home on Madison Avenue: Next
Stop, Your Living Room
For
immediate relase.
Retail
stores throughout Manhattan are adorned with the
kind of modern
high-tech furniture you used to only see in futuristic
science fiction movies. Thanks to innovative artists
from overseas and designers right here in New
York City, modern furniture has taken on a modern-industrial
aesthetic. Call it what you will, this modustrial
furniture blends beautiful and simple materials
with high end design; and you can’t find
a clothing store on Madison Avenue that hasn’t
tapped into this exciting cosmopolitan verve.
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Pipe
scaffold display armature at entry |
DKNY, Diesel, Louis Vuitton, Salvatore Ferragamo, Emporio
Armani, Gucci, Hugo Boss, Versace, Prada, Gant, Bruno
Magli: the list of names reads like a who’s who
in New York City fashion. And every one of these luxury
fashion boutiques has borrowed this industrial ethos and
stylized it to suit their individual stores.
Furniture
showrooms have also engaged this new aesthetic as consumers
demand more modern industrial design and less traditional
country woodwork. The Henro Furniture Showroom in SoHo
featured the designs of artist Roy Kushner, whose furniture
merges everyday materials with fresh and exciting ideas
about modern design.
Kushner
collaborated with DKNY on Madison Avenue,
to create pipe-scaffold window displays exclusively
for the July release of Donna Karan’s
short film “New York Stories: A Little Film
About a Big City.” The store also featured
an exciting coffee table, also by Kushner, which borrowed
from the scaffolding aesthetic to create an original
design which stands completely on its own. The round
“Viza”
table, has a circular glass slab supported on sexy metal
tubing bound by rugged industrial clamps; this inspiring
piece of furniture synthesizes everyday materials, modern
forms, and abstract geometry.
“The
materials for the furniture designs are immediately
recognizable; and this lends to their immediate appeal.
At the same time, their forms are modern and unique,”
says Kushner. In New York City, fashion is a trend;
but furniture and design are all about lifestyle. “The
retail industry understands this connection between
style and lifestyle. When they sell you clothing, they
also sell you a lifestyle. It’s this lifestyle
image – furniture, clothing, music, art, values
– that will stand the test of time, the fashions
will come and go.”
Roy
Kushner invited members from the art and design community
to attend a free event at the Henro furniture showroom
on November 12, 2003. Nearly one-hundred people came
by the showroom to see a selection of his metal and
glass tables alongside some of the industries’
most beautiful chairs, sofas, and recliners.
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