New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Treading the boards, on treadmills. The “abstracted collage of a factory” created by Rockwell Group for the musical adaptation of the 2005 British film Kinky Boots.

David Rockwell gave a whirlwind tour of selected design projects during a session at Internet Week in New York. The Rockwell Group founder offered insight into how his firm’s interactive design LAB operates as they solve design dilemmas for clients in the worlds of hospitality, travel, and theatre. He also previewed pending assignments.

Rockwell observed that as his career progressed, technology has taken center stage. “The technology lab is embedded in my firm, and my work now with the lab is the most exciting. It engages technology to connect people more in real-time.” From the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas to the JetBlue terminal at New York’s JFK airport to the set design for the Broadway musical Kinky Boots, Rockwell has incorporated technology and choreography-focused designs. Below are his comments on selected projects.

On the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas:
“The promise of Las Vegas is of a place that reinvents itself, but in reality that’s not true, since visitors can’t move freely,” said Rockwell. “The hotel lobby was fourteen feet high and had massive Egyptian-style columns. Our designers worked to dematerialize the walls in an open-source way so people would have a different experience each time they entered. The casino, unlike others in Vegas, was vertical, so we blew a forty-square-foot hole through the podium.”

Rockwell Group used an “environmental choreography system and created a hall of images in the hotel lobby, to allow more personal interaction.” The effect has been “somewhat hypnotic”, though the hotel would prefer visitors to linger in the casino, he noted.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“This space has always been about community,” says Patrick Willingham, executive director of The Public Theatre at Astor Place, the magisterial 19th-century Renaissance Revival building that, since the late 1960s, has served as a multi-stage venue for founding director Joseph Papp’s vision of a new and groundbreaking American theatre. Architecturally, at least, that has never been more the case: the capstone of nearly two decades of renovation/restoration work, to the tune of $42 million, by Ennead Architects (formerly Polshek Partnership), the recently completed revivification of the structure’s entry and lobby have dramatically expanded the Public’s public component–making the place that brought you (among countless theatrical high-water marks) Hair, A Chorus Line, and The Normal Heart a crowd-pleaser in every sense.

Though Papp’s intervention, in 1966, saved it from demolition, the building, at 425 Lafayette Street in Manhattan’s East Village, was hardly insignificant. Completed in three phases (by three architects) between 1853 and 1881, it was commissioned by John Jacob Astor and served as the city’s first free public library. In 1921, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society purchased the property and converted it into a shelter and all-purpose gathering place for newly arrived European Jews; the letters HIAS, in faded paint, are still visible on the northern elevation. Under Papp’s supervision, architect Giorgio Cavaglieri carved out five theatres of varying sizes and configurations, home to some of the great productions of the last half-century. But the communal spaces remained less than stellar: during the HIAS years, the original grand entry podium was lost, replaced by an interior stair that consumed 30 percent of the lobby. And subsequent to Papp’s original renovation, the structure received almost no upgrading until Ennead began substantive work in the mid-nineties.

Without, project architect Stephen Chu, along with design counsel James Polshek and management partner Duncan Hazard, restored the original auspicious sense of arrival with a three-sided grand stair, measuring seventeen by seventy feet and constructed from solid blocks of black granite, protected by a new glass canopy. In addition to extracting the steps from the lobby and enabling theatre patrons to enter at the original level of the three arched front doors, the new stoop serves as a welcome outdoor destination on a street previously lacking one, a magnetized urban gathering place akin to the monumental stairs in front of the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue (though less imposing and more boho).
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“We’ve had great [design] moments in punk, but I’ve very excited about the urinal–a urinal at the Met!” said André Leon Talley at Monday’s gala. “According to Patti Smith, punk began in a urinal downtown somewhere that I never went to, so I’m excited to see that.” The Vogue veteran was dressed in an elaborately embroidered cape–think Joseph’s technicolor dreamcoat meets MacKenzie-Childs–designed for him by Tom Ford. “I love this coat and I don’t consider it punk. I just consider it appropriate for this occasion,” said Talley with a chuckle. “I said to Anna [Wintour], I didn’t do punk. I skipped punk and went straight to couture.”

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After four generations of family ownership, Maharam is changing hands. The beloved New York City-based textiles firm, founded in 1902 by Louis Maharam, is being acquired by Herman Miller for $156 million, the company announced this week. “Much as we’ve struggled with this decision, our philosophical kinship with Herman Miller helped make this difficult step a far easier one,” said CEO Michael Maharam, who along with his brother, Stephen (who serves as COO), will remain active in the day-to-day management of the company for the next couple of years. “Herman Miller’s potential to provide the wherewithal to pursue important new initiatives, as well as an established reach into both retail and international markets and the greatest possible strength of association, offers a powerful lever in achieving our design-centered strategic vision.” Maharam is perhaps best known for its re-editions of iconic 20th century designs, including the work of Anni Albers, Charles and Ray Eames, and Alexander Girard. In recent years the company has developed textiles with collaborators such as Hella Jongerius, Paul Smith, Marian Bantjes, and Sarah Morris.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Casa Lever is a feast for the senses. Tucked inside Gordon Bunshaft‘s eternally modern Lever House in midtown Manhattan, the restaurant features a beehive-gone-nautical interior dreamed up by Marc Newson, a fit-for-Fellini brand identity by Matteo Bologna and the gang at Mucca Design (don’t miss the wine list, studded with lovely and informative maps!), and, for dessert, a mind-blowing gianduia that suggests Nutella as reimagined by a band of pastry-loving cherubs. And then there are the Warhols.

Thanks to a lending arrangement with Lever House owner Aby Rosen and his Lever House Art Collection, Casa Lever patrons dine with a wall of Warhol portraits: a pair of Hitchcock profiles here, twin Jerry Halls there, the sassy Aretha that covered Ms. Franklin’s eponymous 1986 album–and proved to be Warhol’s last work–eyeing the exit. It’s always fun to play a round of “Which would you like to own?” while waiting for your ravioli di brasoto (or your third gianduia, as the case may be) to arrive, in which case one’s eyes are inevitably pulled to the rear of the restaurant, where the elevated private dining room–aglow with the best Warhols of the bunch–floats behind a Newsonian trapezoid of glass. Until recently, that’s where they kept the pair of pastel Dennis Hoppers from 1971, which stared down a couple of Giorgio Armani portraits in which the blue-eyed designer resembles a debonair Siberian husky.

As of today, there’s a new girl in town: Judy Garland. The recently acquired Judys (above), made by Warhol in 1978 and circa 1979, debuted today in the private dining room. They are best admired in the company of a newly created “Judy Garland” cocktail. Casa Lever “mixologist” Cristina Bini‘s commemorative blend of bourbon whisky, barolo chinato, mint essence, and absinthe is sure to take you somewhere over the rainbow in no time. “Edie [Sedgwick] and Judy had something in common–a way of getting everyone totally involved in their problems. When you were around them, you forgot you had problems of your own, you got so involved in theirs,” Warhol once said. “They had dramas going right around the clock, and everybody loved to help them through it all. Their problems made them even more attractive.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Imagine swimming through your day in an ocean of blue expertly matched to a series of David Hockney pool paintings.

In the latest episode of Cubes, we show you the New York offices of Morris + King public relations. Lead partner and co-principal Judith R. King takes the mediabistroTV crew on a musical journey featuring chairs from the Stella Solaris cruise ship and 1970s French jumbo jets, specially chosen chandeliers and offices painted any color you like as long as its blue.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Rotterdam-based Studio Makkink & Bey, led by architect Rianne Makkink and designer Jurgen Bey, has long envisioned a progressive office in which the multitasking extends to the furnishings: a seat that doubles as a self-contained desk and cupboard, a flexible “WorkSofa,” a cozy chair that can be coupled up to create instant meeting space (the “EarChair,” pictured above). The studio is showcasing these designs and more as part of “Fantasy Room for Working,” an exhibition on view through Sunday within the Creative Lounge MOV, a huge shared office space in Tokyo. Earlier this week, among the KadE Chair, Vacuum Cleaner Chair, stools, and aprons, was Bey himself–he put his designs to the test by working from the flexible fantasy office for eight days. Studio Makkink & Bey’s Prooff (Progressive Office) “working and living landscape” interior was also recently acquired by Utrecht’s Centraal Museum, where parts of it are on view through May 25. Take note, Marissa Meyer.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“It’s one of my little marble fantasies. I started used marble a lot in 2005, 2006–in fact, Azzedine’s shop was one of the first things I did. At the time, no one was really using marble in a contemporary way. Marble was considered a really old-fashioned material. I’d picked up a little bit of experience over the years from going to Ferrara in Italy where they carve a lot of marble. People are always looking for new materials and new technology, like brand new high-tech things, but they don’t really exist. All of the materials that we think of as new materials have actually been around for at least ten or fifteen years. Doing something new is really about re-appropriating something, using a new material in a different context. As a designer you can only really do that if you work in different disciplines. That’s why I like doing all these different things and learning about different things. I designed a range of luggage for Samsonite ages ago, and the technology I used was something I had learned from designing trainers for Nike.”

-Marc Newson, interviewed by Jonathan Ive in i-D magazine

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Also honored this morning at Contract‘s 34th annual interiors awards, held at New York’s Cipriani 42nd Street, was Michael Graves, who received the 2013 Legend award for lifetime achievement. (Graves is a past Contract Designer of the Year, having clinched that title back in 1981.) Among the projects that bested the competition in 13 categories are INNOCAD’s Vienna office for Microsoft, complete with gleaming silver slide; the Bentel & Bentel-led transformation of the public areas in the Grand Hyatt New York; Rockwell Group’s Untitled restaurant at the Whitney; and Wuhan Pixel Box Cinema, a pixel-themed, 95,000-square-foot movie theater in Wuhan, China, designed by One Plus Partnership.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

-Interior designer Andrée Putman, who died Saturday in Paris at the age of 87

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Nothing says “fresh start” quite like a new online home. On the sculptural heels of its 25th anniversary year, the Calder Foundation has debuted a new website at calder.org with the goal of creating a “more visceral, firsthand experience of Alexander Calder‘s work.” A splash page features videos of mobiles in motion, and amidst the foundation’s trove of images, cataloguing info, and historical texts are new features including a blog, a timeline of the artist’s life in pictures, and a selection of rarely seen historic Calder films (check out Hans Richter‘s 1962 experimental short From the Circus to the Moon).

Also ringing in 2013 with a new website is the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). Part membership hub, part design showcase, the upgraded asid.org, launched today, begins with a homepage that highlights rotating designer portfolios based on a user’s location as well as the option to view portfolios and search for designers by specialty and expertise. Head to the “Knowledge Center” to bone up on topics such as sustainable design and to browse case studies that illustrate how interior design can address specific physical, psychological, social, and economic needs.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.