Starck Contrast
Move over minimalism, says design duo
“Take the Gehry building on the West Side,” said Mr. Alesch the other day, sitting at a table made from a reclaimed factory door in the firm’s offices on Lafayette Street, referring to the nine-story glass structure, home to Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp, that seems to jut above the highway like a disembodied jumble of windows.
“Oh,” groaned Ms. Standefer.
“Every car I’ve ever been in, when we’ve driven by it, we’ve made fun of it,” Mr. Alesch said.
“Every single person I’ve ever been with,” Ms. Standefer echoed with a nod.
SANAA’s recently completed New Museum on the Bowery, meanwhile? “A monument to abandonment,” Mr. Alesch declared. “I think it leaves a lot of people empty. The only people it doesn’t are fashion-obsessed or architects, I swear to God.”
“Fashion-obsessed like they want to fit in,” Ms. Standefer said.
“There’s a huge amount of artifice in modern architecture,” Mr. Alesch said. “It loves to brag that it’s really, really authentic—that the most authentic method of living is in a kind of minimalist environment. But it’s so contrived and so pretend.”
“But then you have to define what you think modern is, because I think we’re modern,” Ms. Standefer said.
The couple, who founded Roman and Williams in 1999, naming it after their respective grandfathers (“We just loved the period they’re from, what they represent, we like the genes they gave us,” said Ms. Standefer)—is currently attempting to redefine what, exactly, New York thinks of as “modern.” Their company, which currently employs 25, is responsible for the low-lit, masculine makeover of Philippe Starck’s lobby in the Royalton last fall. By year’s end; they plan a redo of both the Breslin, a landmark building on Broadway and West 29th Street, commissioned by ACE Hotel Group, a hipster firm based in Seattle; and the Standard, hotelier André Balazs’s hotly anticipated behemoth in the meatpacking district. Morgans Hotel Group, which owns the Royalton, also retained the firm last month to turn 30,000 feet of unused underground space at the Hudson Hotel on 356 West 58th Street, another Starck creation, into an entertainment and meeting complex, complete with a screening room built into the site of an old, unused swimming pool.
The Roman and Williams aesthetic is a richly textured, purposefully nostalgic and largely handmade one: full of massive, dark woods and animal skins and re-purposed industrial materials, like that factory door. It’s the kind of sturdy design that’s meant to last 500 years—if only trends would permit.
A New Standard
When they are together, which is most of the time, the mellow Mr. Alesch, 42, and the faster-talking Ms. Standefer, 43, speak almost exclusively in the first-person-plural tense, constructing joint, richly textured run-on sentences, much as they layer materials and idiosyncratic objects in the hotels and residences they create.
He has longish blond hair and facial scruff, grew up in Wisconsin, was trained as an architect through internships after graduating from Northern Arizona University and likes to surf at the beach near the couple’s home in Montauk, where they retire each weekend to entertain friends like hotelier Sean McPherson, who owns a residence nearby. Next Page >
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Gosh, I do like the work that roman and williams have done at the royalton, up to a point.
I think these guys are really good stylists, up to a point.
sad thing is, the royalton will fail way quicker than the philip starck project ever did. you can bet on it.
These guys are stylists who have forgotten the importance of their architectural education.
a good layout matters and the royalton doesnt have that.
The restaurant, while innovative in retro kind of way is a dead end cul de sac that is far too removed from the street and the spaces that have the energy. the seating is often awkwardly laid out and not good for generating social activity. ... cases in point.
They ought to be a little less proud of their position on design, they work well in set design perhaps, but they haven't made the transition to practicing good architecture yet, in fact, i doubt, base on what i am reading here, that they ever knew what it was.
idiots!!! is that minimalist enough?
so one hotel client hires them because they have "no style," and the new owner of the Royalton is some accountant hack from some flyover state who has no style or sense of NYC.
These idiots blithely destroyed one of the city's most significant--one of the only intact, for that matter--interiors of the 80's era, and replaced it with a kitschy, hippie rec room.
The pieces are all here for an utter and complete takedown--the subjects themselves are practically baiting you. And yet the Observer chokes, giving us an uncritical puff piece sprinkled a few hints of what could have been.
Now you have Royalton Lobby blood on your hands, too. It might be a spilled Cosmo, but it still ain't coming off.
This poor couple does not realize they are being hired for their ass-kissing. Just like production designers on films all they have to do is please, not think.
Whenever anyone starts a critique with "My friends and I always laugh...." you know whatever follows is rubbish. Ass kissing is right. These two wouldn't know good design if it smacked them in their dirty brown noses.
Okay, Royalton aside, fluffy writing aside, how often do I see something in print that takes the gloves off and puts something out there other than nauseating torrents of praise for any stupid shape dreamed up by some celebrity of the moment from somewhere or other? Pretty brave, as long as you're up for the same where your work is concerned. Actually, I think the hotel is sexy, not the Parthenon, and it will probably end up in a dumpster like nearly all hotel lobbies, retail stores or clubs. The Stark hotel was amazing when it was new, but was it enduring?
Lots of breathless excitement and sanctimonious endorsement for things that even if we wanted them around for a hundred years, they probably won't make it. Explanations aside (I read them over and over again), can you imagine thinking 'I'm going to build a museum in New York, and I want it to look just like a stack of pizza boxes'? How 'New York' is that? 'That is what I aspire to as an architect. That is the right thing to do. I've always loved piles of boxes with no scale, detail or materiality. I always wanted to make one myself. They inspire me. They are innovative. Fresh. I love to walk down the streets of a magnificent city and see bland, featureless things that used to be new. I want to spend time in them after the whiteness goes all yellow and grey. For as long as I remember, I've always hated buildings with fussy, textured materials and tiresome details made by ignorant, unenlightened simpletons. That was okay before our world was transformed by innovation and an optimistic vision of what the future might be. Those other buildings are old, depressing; boring. They are not entertaining or fresh or 'important'. We cannot afford them anyway. People will love my bland-box and it will enrich their lives and those of future generations". Or: "People like featureless buildings. It's not like it used to be. Ugly is the new wonderful. Buildings are temporary anyway. It's a throwaway world. That's fine as long as they are recyclable. Innovation made of soy. Cradle to cradle. It's very 'green'. We have to consider the environment. We live in a new world, and we'll be taught to love it. It's re-purposed. Maybe buildings need expiration dates. People need to be educated so that they will learn how great bland can be and learn to love bland. They must be taught to surrender their ancient, ignorant, reactionary prejudices and embrace innovation."
I hate dry wall. Hard to get inspired by a bunch of rectangles made of gypsum and paper. Spank me.
its a shame what they did at the Royalton. That they would even consider opining about other designers in this paper is beyond me. It clearly demonstrates their lack of judgement and respect, in the deepest sense of the word, for their colleagues.
For the duo to suggest that their cumbersome brown room [that was even panned by a non-architect food critic-- who couldn't avoid commenting] gives them permission to criticize Gehry and SANAA is shameful and in bad taste.
Like much of Hollywood (and--or--as well as, their celebrity bloated clients like Hudson and Paltrow) they are caught in their own publicity machines that create smoke and rattle along braying, sneering and kibbutzing everything around them.
Step back Observer and observe what it is you are fueling here...has the writer's eyes welled up from the smoke, the lack of irony or just their shmoozy quasi aesthetic?
They are tacky, when you get down to it...
fact check..."architects"!?..last time I checked, one needed to be licensed in order to advertise themselves as architects.
who owns a residence nearby
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