December 26, 2019

Top Showroom Debuts of 2019

From Guadalajara to Milan and from Manhattan to West Hollywood, design firms put a 21st-century spin on manufacturers’ showrooms. Here are 10 of the top showroom debuts of 2019. 

Esrawe Studio Designs Experiential Showroom and Exhibition Space for Grupo Arca in Guadalajara

Grupo Arca has big ambitions. With showrooms in Mexico City and Monterrey, it is a favorite of Mexico-based architects and interior designers, offering them premium building materials: wood flooring from France, an array of masonry bricks, Italian-fabricated engineered stone, and exotic natural stone from around the globe. But Grupo Arca also takes pride in being “a node of creative connections that promotes design, culture, and art through extraordinary experiences.” Those include a new generation of design centers conceived more as museums that celebrate the art of materiality than traditional commercial showrooms. They will offer flexible, changeable venues for temporary exhibitions, film screenings, and musical performances. The first, designed by Esrawe Studio, opened in Guadalajara and won the 2019 Best of Year award for Showroom. Read more about this project 

Tom Dixon Opens Restaurant/Showroom The Manzoni in Milan

Rather than just another five-day exhibition at Salone de Mobile, designer Tom Dixon decided to make his mark on Milan a little more permanent. His Design Research Studio created The Manzoni, a restaurant that doubles as a showroom. Incorporating Dixon’s three new collections, The Manzoni—named for its location at 5 Via Manzoni—elevates the products from simply being on display to functioning in an active environment. The 100-cover, 5,000-square-foot restaurant officially debuted after Salone and opened to the public in May. Read more about this project

Cindy Crawford on Hand for Opening of New Cosentino City Los Angeles Center

The opening of the Cosentino City Los Angeles Center, in the heart of West Hollywood’s design district, was a big deal. First, there was the presence of supermodel Cindy Crawford, Cosentino’s Silestone brand ambassador, who was on hand to cut the ribbon after just inking another contract. Equally photogenic was the $1.7 million property itself: 4,208 square feet of indoor and outdoor space, including 3,529 square feet of showroom to display the Spanish producer’s collections of Silestone and Dekton natural quartz surfacing. Read more about this project

Patricia Urquiola and BMW Look to the Skies for Showroom Inspiration

BMW Group tapped Interior Design Hall of Fame member Patricia Urquiola to collaborate with Senior Vice President Adrian van Hooydonk on a showroom for the company’s latest flagship cars at the BMW Welt in Munich. The cars are displayed at the combined exhibition, museum, and event venue on 3,466 square feet of flooring made from terrazzo using cutting-edge 3D-printing technology. Read more about this project

Here’s What the New 1stdibs Gallery in New York City Means for Designers

Design enthusiasts braved icy weather conditions to celebrate the 1stdibs gallery opening near Manhattan’s Hudson Yards development. The opening fête saw over 600 guests, including the likes of Lora Appleton, Alexandre Assouline, Shantell Martin, and S. Russell Groves, come together to celebrate the design mainstay’s permanent New York space. With the dust settled from the brand’s buzzy opening bash, New York’s design community may be wondering what 1stdibs’ expanded presence in the city means. Read more about this project

Ben Soleimani Opens First Showroom in West Hollywood Design District

There’s a new kid on the block. Make that a significant corner on Melrose Avenue in the heart of L.A.’s West Hollywood design district. But Ben Soleimani, owner of the 5,000-square-foot eponymous showroom, is hardly a newcomer to the design world. He has dealt in high-end rugs for the past 30 years. Now, he’s created a full line of furniture and some accessories—all of it contemporary, all of it solid. Read more about this project

Molteni&C|Dada Opens Villa-Inspired Los Angeles Flagship

Interior Design has visited zillions of showrooms, but rare among them is a space we’d actually like to move into. Count the newly launched Molteni&C|Dada flagship in partnership with the ddc Group as one of them (opened just a few months after a new Museum District flagship in London). Located in the heart of Los Angeles’s West Hollywood design district and designed by Belgian architect Vincent van Duysen, who is also the firm’s creative director, the space sprawls over 7,600 square feet on two floors. Read more about this project

Lutron Opens New Commercial Experience Center in Manhattan’s NoMad Neighborhood

Lutron invited press and industry guests to visit its new commercial Experience Center in Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood, which at a spacious 5,500 square feet is almost twice the size of Lutron’s previous Penn Plaza location. The center offers architects, designers, contractors, developers, and building owners an immersive experience that showcases Lutron’s range of lighting and control capabilities. Read more about this project

Luminaire Opens Showroom in LA Designed by Make Architecture

Now there are three—Luminaire showrooms that is. The newest, in Los Angeles, opened in late 2018 in the heart of West Hollywood’s design district and follows the 1974 launch in Miami and 1989 opening in Chicago. The LA venue, a corner site in a 1960s building, is immense: 21,000 square feet on two floors. Local studio Make Architecture designed the space, with Luminaire founders Nasir and Nargis Kassamali collaborating on the vision. Read more about this project

Bendheim DesignLab Debuts at New York Design Center in Manhattan

Bendheim may have opened the United States’ first specialty architectural glass showroom 30 years ago, but the company isn’t content to rest on its laurels. The firm debuted its 5,000-square-foot DesignLab on the top floor of the New York Design Center in midtown Manhattan last summer. “Our goal is to educate and inspire design professionals, and help them create their own solutions,” says Bendhein’s executive vice president and co-owner Steven Jayson. “In order to accomplish this, we had to bring several tons of architectural glass to the top floor of a building that was designed and constructed in the 1920s.” Read more about this project

At Gestalt New York’s Upstate Showroom, City Style Meets Country Charm

Opening a brick-and-mortar store hardly makes one a trailblazer. But in an age where e-commerce is increasingly the norm, two design-industry mavens are revisiting the concept of what it means to have a showroom. Gestalt New York, which opened an upstate outpost in the town of Hudson, New York this past July, is a collaboration between design consultants and business partners Karolina Dabo and Adrian Pollack. The company’s new store offers a curated selection of handcrafted furniture, lighting, and objets d’art from international and sometimes under-the-radar brands, as well as reissues of timeless classics. Read more about this project

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