Why I Really ♥ NY

Cindy Allen -- Interior Design, 9/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

I call it NY7, my seventh annual glimpse, as editor in chief, inside New York's engine of perpetual creative motion. With designers' rpm gauges all flirting with the red mark, tracking the industry's antics in and around the five boroughs, then out to the Hamptons, is comparable to following a breakneck off-road race. Gensler's new office is the most eco-conscious thing to happen to Rockefeller Center in quite a while. (Yes, it's possible to make LEED Silver in a 1930's building.) When Clodagh was asked to help a little local bistro to reinvent itself for the big time, she turned to an unlikely ally, thousands of linear feet of "rebar" made of cast fiberglass. And Piero Lissoni joined two hometown firms to turn an old East Hampton Post Office into a chic showcase for Elie Tahari. Battling fundamental problems and managing brilliant executions, all our protagonists—practitioners and clients alike—are striving to be good and pressing to get better. That's a model of citizenship and leadership that politicos and city managers would do well to emulate.

Our September appointment with the Archetypal City delivers something more than a window on speed, mystique, and glamour in real time. Shed those things, and you get a living testimonial of designers' steadfast determination to express themselves, of course, while moving toward a greener, safer planet. One New York minute at a time. —Cindy