Tools of the Trade

Cindy Allen -- Interior Design, 3/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

For the third year in a row, our March issue takes a freewheeling, high-spirited jackhammer to the carefully constructed architecture of our editorial departments. Turn back to the table of contents, and—instead of the usual headings—you'll find what I'll prosaically describe as the interior designer's definitive toolbox: everything you need to get the job done.

What space would be complete without our cousins, the painters and sculptors? Or our siblings, the artisans and consultants who make exquisite tapestries and curtains or work wonders with color and light? Manufacturers bring us the best furniture, fixtures, fabrics, and flooring, so we've put together a portfolio of 11 new international showrooms. Plus resource directors' dream product picks. And there's nothing more essential than kitchens and bathrooms—whether they're for a Ferrari collector from Argentina or a young professional in Tel Aviv.

With tools like these, the results are truly inspiring. The projects in our "Works" chapter prove it again and again—in ways that couldn't be more diverse. Take a brutalist fortress of a fire station outside Paris and a confection of a dog-grooming parlor in the southern city of Nice. At a riverfront gym in Chicago, Bill Sofield mixes vintage seating with an antique Chinese marriage bed. On the roof of a New York building, Brian Messana and Toby O'Rorke furnish a meditation room with one lone Eames chair.

Daring to set our March stories free, we've noticed that a funny thing happened on the way to the printing press. Instead of losing direction, the issue points unwaveringly, like a compass, to design's True North.