interiors

(Photos, left to right: Patrick McMullan Company and UnBeige)

David Stark has long been the go-to event designer for the Cooper-Hewitt's annual National Design Awards gala. In recent years, he and his team have transformed everyday objects—from cushions to cocktail napkins—into colorful tableaux that popped against the walls of the white tent pitched in the museum's courtyard. This year, with the museum in the throes of a massive renovation, the gala was moved to Cipriani 42nd Street, a York & Sawyer-designed bank turned cavernous, landmarked event space. Even with a 65-foot ceiling to contend with, Stark rose to the challenge, creating bold and graphic decor inspired by the awards program's tenth anniversary.

To make the designers the stars of the evening, Stark designed a series of graphic patterns from the names of past National Design Award winners. Set in white all-caps Futura on the NDA's signature cyan, the text patterns made for a striking contrast with Cipriani's Corinthian columns, inlaid floors, and soaring, Wedgewood-domed ceiling. "The important thing is always to create elements of scale that relate to the room you're in," Stark told us. "Much like we've done at the tented venue, we played with scale by creating entry and ceiling decor elements like the fourteen-foot '10' at the entrance and eight-foot drumshades suspended from the ceiling. On each, the pattern was exploded to various scales so the typography can be admired for its shape as well as its message, and provide interplay with the elaborate background of the space."

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There are many reasons to admire interior designer Kelly Wearstler: her fearless cabinet-of-curiosities-meets-old-Hollywood-on-an-acid-trip aesthetic, her largely unheralded skill for maximizing vertical space in even the most sprawling of interiors, her unceasing faith in shagreen (we're with you, sister!). Having gone west to assess Wearstler and her maximal style for a recent profile in The New Yorker, writer Dana Goodyear reveals the designer's aspirations to lifestyle brand-dom. "Someday, I want to have a store where I'll sell accessories, furniture, and clothing, like Ralph Lauren," says Wearstler. First up: crafty wearables that are just as exuberant as the rooms she designs.

For the past year, she has been working on a line of jewelry, scarves, bags, and belts. The collection includes necklaces made from heavy chains for chandeliers and others decorated with drawer pulls; wooden dowels as pendants; leather cuffs studded with upholstery nails; and brass beads from a lighting catalogue strung onto black silk ribbon....A mockup board in her office shows a photograph of her with an enormous tassel fringe in metallic gold wool, the kind that would be used to trim a piece of furniture, draped across her chest as a bib necklace.

On Monday, we showed you one of Martyn Lawrence-Bullard's prelimnary sketches for this year's Emmy Award green room. Our pals over at Architectural Digest were kind enough to follow up with a photo of the finished product. Seemed interesting to us, to see it from concept to completion, so we thought we'd share it here, side by side.

(Photos: Craig T. Mathew/Mathew Imaging)

Looks pretty swanky. We were a bit concerned that it might turn out a little too pastel or bright, based off of the initial drawings, but fortunately it looks like Lawrence-Bullard was just using lighter inks on the paper, but actually had darker in his head.

Do you hold fond memories in your heart of writer Kay Thompson and illustrator Hilary Knight's Eloise books? Or better still, have children who have taken a liking to them? If so, and you happen to have lots of disposable income, now's your chance to experience some of the book, as fashion icon Betsey Johnson will be designing a suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York based on the series of books staring that precocious youngster and her pink and black-striped home within the famous hotel. The suite hasn't been finished yet, as Johnson has been wrapped up with all the trappings of Fashion Week, but will begin work designing it just as soon as this week ends. However, the Plaza already has their reservations pages up and running and those who stay in the suite will have access to its two bedrooms, receive a copy of Eloise, some postcards, and free "Super Duper Sundae from In-Room Dining." Rates start at $895 per night, or $3,595 per night for the "Live Like Eloise Slumber Party Package."

For the past eight years, Architectural Digest has gotten the choice gig of creating the green room for the annual Emmy Awards, via a designer they pick to develop the project for them (they also do up the Academy Awards' celebrity waiting room, the last occurrence of which we reported on back in February). This year, they've hired designer-to-the-stars Martyn Lawrence-Bullard and with him, have gone beyond their usual couple of press releases and a feature in the magazine by also starting a blog, with Lawrence-Bullard taking time off from, you know, actually designing and building out the space, to talking about his concepts for it, the execution of the project, etc. The blog's been fairly sparse thus far, with just three entries since its quiet launch back in early July (or perhaps these posts were just created a bit early, to test things out), but each covers a lot of ground, with a few dozen paragraphs per post all about what's been going on. So while you might not have access backstage on Sunday night when the big Emmy show kicks off, it's a nice look at the work going into where all those television people will be hanging out, preparing for their inane patter and bad joke delivery.

Bryan Batt is a man of many talents. When he's not playing the fabulous, closeted art director Salvatore Romano on AMC's Mad Men, Batt keeps busy designing contemporary interiors as the co-owner of Hazelnut, a gift and home accessories store in the Big Easy. Three words: New Orleans toile! His latest project is a home decor book. According to Publishers Marketplace, Batt has just inked a deal with Clarkson Potter for a tome that will explore his favorite spaces and "through his own witty commentary and design techniques, show readers how to create their own stylish and enchanting spaces." While the book isn't slated for publication until fall 2011, Batt will be back in living rooms in a few short weeks: Mad Men's third season premieres on August 16.

Biggest design news story of the week? Well, if you were paying attention, you noticed that it was the hubbub surrounding the blog Serious Lunch discovering that the new set where Conan O'Brien delivers the opening monologue in his new hosting duties at the Tonight Show looks an awful lot like a level map for a chapter in the Super Mario Brothers franchise. There's really nothing more than that to this story, but it's making the rounds like wildfire. After all, Serious Lunch's filling in of the background is pretty convincing, as is their transfixing animated gif.

Tel Aviv-born, Eindhoven-educated, and New York-based Dror Benshetrit is showing off his Isaac Mizrahi-style high/low range. After making a splash at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair with his crowd-pleasing crumpled felt peacock chair for Cappellini, the designer and founder of Studio Dror this month sees the launch of his line of affordable homegoods for Target. The limited-edition "Dror for Target" range includes bedding, decorative accessories, and stationery in a palette of brown, raspberry, plum, and aqua. Among the items that caught our eye? A modular shelving system (pictured above) that can be configured to fit a range of environments and functions. At $89.99 per set, it's the most expensive item in the 23-product collection, which also includes 99-cent mini-composition books and pillows that flip from abstract patterns to pixellated birds or butterflies, depending on your appetite for fauna and figuration. More Dror-designed Target merch is featured after the jump.

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If you somehow found yourself in possession of a time machine, what would be the first thing you'd do. If you said "I'd like to see what Burger King looks like in the future" then we would respond with: "That's stupid." But we say that out of care for you, dear reader, because we don't want you wasting your precious time machine tokens on something you can see today. Nation's Restaurant News has published information about and photos of the new store layout designs for the fast food chain. It's all flash and sizzle, from LCD menus to lighting that looks like flames -- though the long and short of it seems to be that if you've ever been to a sports bar chain, you probably won't be seeing anything particularly new. It certainly isn't as snazzy as the McDonald's redesign from a little while back (though Burger King probably won't get in trouble with Arne Jacobsen for their new digs). Also unfortunately, all of this will be moot anyway because, if the 1993 film Demolition Man taught us anything, it's that the only restaurants in the future will be Taco Bells anyway. So enjoy the new BK look while you can.

Finally, a sink worthy of rinsing the years of dust from your Juicy Salif citrus-squeezer! That's right, Philippe Starck has designed his first kitchen sink—the "Starck K"—for Duravit, the 192-year-old bathroom products company that has collaborated with Starck since 1994. As with every kitchen sink we've ever seen, the Starck K boasts abundant right angles, "creating a sleek, simple rectangle with an all-around rim." Inside that rectangle is a deep sink cleverly connected to a recessed draining area and/or basin to prevent overflow, and the whole thing perfectly accommodates Starck-designed cutting boards and trays. An overhead shot suggests a life spent selecting superior produce and cheerfully preparing elaborate salads. The Starck K is available in various sizes and a selection of colors: white, anthracite, chestnut brown, or pergamon—which is Duravitspeak for a beige hue that smacks of ancient Greece.