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Vitra Announces Manhattan Move

Staff -- Interior Design, 10/31/2001 1:30:00 PM

Vitra, the design-driven furniture manufacturer for home and office, has just signed a lease on a new 12,100 square foot showroom in New York on Ninth Avenue in the area of Manhattan known as the "meatpacking" district. Outgrowing their current Flatiron showroom/office in less than five years, Vitra intends to have a street presence in this new location, serving both designers and design savvy consumers.

In keeping with the Vitra vision to recognize emerging design talent in the fields of interior, graphic and furniture design, the company has hired Lindy Roy, principal of the New York based architectural firm ROY to design the space, which they anticipate will be open for business in the Summer of 2002. The space will include a store front and lower level retail area and a second story showroom and office for the sales and marketing staff.

"Vitra is a rare and extraordinary client for any design firm," says Roy. "So I am particularly delighted to be chosen for this project. It will not only be our first showroom, but our first completed Manhattan installation. The building itself, a turn of the century, raw industrial space, has great bone structure. Likewise the fact that Vitra selected this emerging neighborhood is in keeping with the company's vision to be a leader on the cutting edge of design."

This past summer, Ms. Roy was the recipient of much attention for her installation at P.S. 1 (which merged with MoMA) in Long Island City, NY, as part of the Young Architects Competition. She was selected, out of a group of 25 young designers, to transform the outdoor playground into a summer oasis of pools, hammocks and walls of fans. Ms. Roy was also the youngest architect to be part of ongoing development in the Hamptons called Houses in Sagaponac developed by Coco Brown with creative advise from Richard Meier. Other projects include eco-tourism resorts in Central America and Africa, a bar also in the "meatpacking" district of Manhattan, and affordable housing in Houston. She is slated to be part of an upcoming show at Cooper Hewitt called New Directions in Hotels and will have an installation at Artists Space next year. Roy, born in South Africa, teaches design at Princeton University and Cooper Union. Before establishing her firm in 2000, she worked with architect Peter Eisenman.