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Springtime, Pacific Time

Cindy Allen -- Interior Design, 3/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

New York designers may make the most noise, but the sounds of California's studios and workshops have been reaching our ears with greater clarity lately. We check up on the Golden State in almost every issue, and March is when we present our annual in-depth look at the goings-on, both north and south. We trust you'll agree that California's interior-design scene and its army of talents keep burgeoning, year after year.

Guided by our intrepid deputy editor, Edie Cohen, we devote the lion's share of this issue to the media business, whose marriage to contemporary design seems a match made in heaven—or a white-hot love affair. With a client name like Neue Sentimental Film, designed by Graft, who could doubt it? Then there's Michael S. Smith and Gensler's headquarters for Revolution Studios of Black Hawk Down fame and Clive Wilkinson's pop-design partnership with Foote, Cone & Belding. Yet Californians are equally passionate connoisseurs of leisure management, as demonstrated by the hotel Duchamp in Sonoma County, Orlando Diaz-Azcuy's restaurant Masa's in San Francisco, and the L.A. residences of architect Stephen Kanner and designer Darryl Wilson, two genuine masters of the craft. Industrial designer Yves Behar reveals what turns him on in "Crosslines," and architect Cory Buckner falls for the mid-century modernism of A. Quincy Jones in "Matters of Design."

With our customary wide-ranging perspective, though, we couldn't resist venturing beyond California's borders. Ritz-Carlton has just opened its downtown Manhattan hotel, the first in the area since 9/11. We're proud to be covering an event so auspicious for New York City as well as this venerable hotel company, which has been updating its image here and abroad. And it shows.