Embody the Power of Nature With This Evocative Collection

A warm bienvenidos to the companies showing at the Interiors from Spain popup at Fulton Market during NeoCon. Swing by the second floor of 950 West Fulton Street to see a range of works, including Khronos, a Rafa Ortega collection for Kriskadecor that ingeniously adds acoustic properties to aluminum chains. The company typically uses metal links to craft custom space dividers, wallcoverings, artful ceiling features, lighting elements, cladding, and the like. Ortega mixes in recycled materials with acoustic properties to create evocative vignettes that balance visual and sonic considerations. The collection’s designs are divided into two groups: Solid (encompassing Metropolis, Rosella, and Boho), inspired by architecture and nature, and Liquid (Mantarraya, Meduses, Peixos), conjuring ebbing currents of water. Through Interiors from Spain. 

Experience Nature’s Phenomena Through Pastel Glass Panels

Neuroinclusive design may be the buzz phrase du jour, but its tenets are perennially salient. That’s the impetus behind a new architectural glass collection reflective of leading research linking biophilic imagery to improved mood, attention, and emotional regulation. Murals on Glass features graphic artist and wallcovering/textile designer Jill Malek’s five most popular abstractions of natural phenomena—think Icelandic vistas and the skies of Sedona, Arizona.

The large-scale pastel art-works, available on panels up to 72 by 144 inches, are fabricated in Chicago with extremely tight registration, enabling the image to stretch seamlessly across multiple panels. “Jill’s work has a rhythm to it: It moves, it breathes,” says Skyline design director Darcie Tashey. “In glass, that rhythm interacts with light and space in new ways, adding another layer to how her designs can shape the built environment.” Play with the transparency to add yet more dimension. 

Good Vibrations: Channeling Chinese Heritage Into Modern Workspaces

Five decades ago, Shenzhen was little more than a Chinese fishing village bordering Hong Kong. Today, it’s a global financial and technological powerhouse—a megacity of futuristic skyscrapers built practically overnight. About 90 miles to the northwest, Foshan is another tech manufacturing metropolis, but one with a long and distinguished commercial and cultural history.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties—a 500-year epoch before the 20th century—Foshan was one of China’s Four Great Towns of Jù, flourishing capitals where trade, industry, arts, culture, and the physical environment achieved harmonious balance. The city was renowned for its ceramics, metalwork, and, more recently, furniture production, and also famed as a cradle of Southern China’s Lingnan culture, which spans martial arts, Cantonese opera, lion dancing, dragon-boat racing, and richly embellished architecture.

Feng Shui Shapes This Sales Center by Ippolito Fleitz Group

This legacy was very much on Ippolito Fleitz Group (IFG)’s mind when the firm conceived the interiors of the sales center and show office at MAX Zone Technology Park—a multibuilding incubator campus for small startups and other enterprises in Foshan’s advanced-manufacturing sector, especially robotics and new-energy development. “Jù is about gathering,” IFG project director Patrick Wu observes, “about bringing vibrant business, cultural, and social energies together to create something different, something more meaningful.”

Simply put, jù is good feng shui at the macro scale, so Wu and his team’s program for the two spaces draws on the city’s layered and evolving identity as a multifaceted urban magnet and creative crucible. “The client liked the idea,” the designer reports, “the park as a place of work and innovation that attracts talent, fosters connection, and supports focus through resonant design.”

Fostering Connection With Humanity + Nature

The vision begins in the 6,500-square-foot sales center, comprising a ground-floor lobby and the entire third floor of one of the park’s low-rise buildings. “Its function is one of welcome and hospitality,” Wu adds, “almost like a hotel.” Indeed, the glamorous lobby could be that of a five-star boutique property. Spanned by stainless-steel arches referencing the local vernacular in pared-down form, the arcade is lined with perforated-grid panels in the same material—a nod to the region’s traditional latticework screens. Textile craft gets an update courtesy of a woven wall hanging by artist Wu Haijiao that faces the main entry, while two other time-honored Chinese mediums—fine porcelain and ink-wash art—are suggested by the reception vignette. The Corian desk, a smoothly molded cup form on a pedestal, has the still presence of an ancient altar bowl, while the overlapping diaphanous silk panels floating behind it recall the layered landscapes of classical brush painting.

A large display model of the park occupies the central space on the third floor. Flanking it are an event lounge with views of the neighboring waterway; private meeting areas, including two tearooms, since tea culture is another important Foshan tradition; a water bar; and a showstopping restroom. Ceramic, stone, and metal are deployed to deft effect throughout. Glazed barrel tile, like a high-gloss version of traditional roof cladding, fronts the water bar, topped with a red-marble counter. More ceramic tile, set in a stainless steel–edged grid, covers walls in the tearooms, each anchored by a massive green-marble table. The same stone composes the restroom’s monumental pièce de résistance: a freestanding, communal circular basin with a wide, beveled lip and conical base, like a modernist kylix, crowned by a four-faced brass-framed mirror fixture suspended above.

Porcelian + Ink-Wash Art Dance Along The Spaces

The show office fills one side of the adjacent building: eight levels in total, including the windowed basement and ground floor—both double-height volumes fitted with mezzanines—and the four stories above. Like a model apartment in a condominium development, the facility offers prospective tenants—in this case, a manufacturer of industrial robots—a concrete vision of how they might adapt and brand the 20,000-square- foot space. “At the same time, it’s a demonstration of the future of the workplace for the Chinese market,” Wu continues, imagining a modern business environment imbued with the ethos of jù. “So the show office serves two functions.”

As in the sales center, the reception desk is a smooth Corian sculpture, but its spiraling form and vivid cobalt hue—the brand color—make it feel as charged and dynamic as the other is calm and still. That energy is channeled by the adjacent stair, another powerfully sculptural blue object, which flows with liquid ease, connecting the mezzanine above, the mezzanine below, and the basement-floor gym—a brilliant-orange space that delivers a further burst of visual energy.

Pops Of Color Deliver A Burst Of Visual Energy

While the lowest level is dedicated to employee leisure—there’s a basketball court with a climbing wall, too—the upper floors propose a variety of workplace scenarios. The second floor emphasizes exploration, discovery, and framing: A freestanding wood-and-glass meeting capsule, set at an oblique angle in the center of the space, “becomes a shelter to the workstations grouped around the windows,” Wu notes, while in one corner, a display of robotic arms is visible through a moon-gate window cut into the glossy blue metal wall. The third floor’s landscape of circular workstations—enclosed with glass or curtains—contrasts with the fourth floor’s highly flexible layout, which can be configured as an open workshop or a series of smaller meeting areas using movable partitions.

The top floor houses the executive suite. But perhaps it’s in the intimate private dining room on the basement mezzanine that the elements of jù come together most persuasively. An open kitchen serving Cantonese sī fòng choi, or personal chef cuisine, faces a circular marble table for eight. Custom leather curtains in a handcrafted honeycomb weave define the space, which features dark granite underfoot and a polished stainless–steel ceiling peppered with a constellation of backlit pinholes that shimmer like a high-tech starry night. If that’s not celestial harmony, what is?

Ippolito Fleitz Group Emphasizes Discovery Inside This Chinese Center

MAX Zone Technology Park Embraces Chinese Traditions

IPPOLITO FLEITZ GROUP: PETER IPPOLITO; SENEM CENNETOGLU; HALIL DOGAN; SAMMA SUN; STEVEN SHANGGUAN; AARON YE; JILL YANG; LEO LUO; CHEN DONG. PWG: CUSTOM FURNITURE WORKSHOP.

FROM FRONT GRADO: SOFA (RECEPTION). CITSOL: SIDE TABLES (RECEPTION), TASK CHAIRS (WORKSTATION). SIDE: HIGH-BACK SOFA (FLEX SPACE). VITRA: LIGHT BLUE CHAIRS. HAY: BARSTOOLS (FLEX SPACE), CHAIRS (CAPSULE). MATZFORM: CHAIRS (TEAROOM, DINING ROOM). NORDST: TABLES.

8 Designers Redefining Residential Style At NeoCon

With terrazzo-inspired flooring and a sinuous outdoor lounge chair, see how these furnishings by creative designers turned heads at NeoCon.

These NeoCon Furnishings Brought The Drama

Jaume Jané and Bern Donadeu for Inclass

Product: Oswell.
Standout: From the Nacar Design founders comes a contemporary shell chair boasting a gently fluted plastic surface—which can also be upholstered—that stacks an impressive 45 high on a trolley. Through Sandler.

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Jason Bird of Luxxbox

Product: Kurtain Line.
Standout: In this acoustic lighting introduction by the Luxxbox founder, dimmable LEDs combine with an undulating body available in 77 shades of Camira Blazer wool, a biodegradable textile certified Indoor Advantage Gold.

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Ashley Weaver of Patcraft

Product: Mix + Mason.
Standout: Made from PVC-free, fully recyclable ReMaterial, the Patcraft product designer’s cost-effective terrazzo-inspired resilient floor planks are engineered for high-traffic areas and come in 18 colorways.

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Edmund Ng and Kenneth Ng for Koncept

Product: Dude.
Standout: Design duo Koncept’s jaunty table lamp with a solid Nero Marquina or Carrara marble base sports an adjustable aluminum “hat,” allowing the user to adjust the angle of the fixture’s warm 2700k illumination.

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Gemma Bernal for Source International

Product: Charm.
Standout: This lounge chair’s every contour is gentle. By Source International, the backrest wraps around to form the arms and cascades all the way to the floor, while the petite rounded seat conveys a sense of playful comfort.

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Ellie Moser of Momentum Textiles & Wallcovering

Product: Ramona.
Standout: The Momentum Textiles & Wallcovering senior designer launches a SoCal-inspired upholstery collection, including this upbeat wool-polyester, all intended to distinguish a “neighborhood” within the workplace. 

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Samuel Wilkinson for Dedon

Product: Fllair.
Standout: Crafted of proprietary fiber woven over a powder-coated aluminum frame, the curvaceous outdoor-ready armchair with a welcoming flared collar marks the London-based designer’s inaugural collab with Dedon.

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Alyssa Coletti for Martin Brattrud

Product: Ojai.
Standout: Powder-coated metal tables by the Nonfiction Creative founder rest on delicate legs—their “anklets” in solid wood, brushed aluminum, or powder-coated metal—with tops in dichroic, clear, smoked, or bronze glass. For Martin Brattrud.

Get More Done with This Game-Changing Seating

The concept of bringing the outdoors in reaches new heights with BuzziBrella by Sebastian Herkner. Its innovative design suspends an umbrella-inspired canopy over a circular seat, establishing an inviting spot for light work, reading, or relaxation. Thoughtful technology integration enhances the functionality: Three LED spots shine from the underside of the tilted canopy, and the structural center pole incorporates three standard USBs and three A+C USB fast chargers. Upholstered in recycled-content fabric, the units incorporate BuzziSpace’s advanced acoustic materials to reduce noise and bolster speech intelligibility, making the design ideal for open-plan environments. Plus, it’s cute to boot.

This Shaw Contract Collection Fosters Creativity In Any Setting

“Go touch grass!” as the Gen Z saying goes, a tongue-in-cheek reminder to anchor oneself in the real. Shaw Contract, the commercial flooring brand, takes that idea to heart in Grounded Spaces, a collection “designed to foster a sense of calm and creativity in any environment, from high-traffic commercial settings to intimate collaborative spaces,” says Shannon Crider Langley, Shaw Contract’s marketing director of workplace and retail. Featuring 90 SKUs across nine organically patterned styles in 10 colorways, the collection is crafted from long-lasting solution-dyed EcoSolutionQ100 fiber with EcoWorx backing. It’s also quick-ship: Up to 2,500 square yards of carpet tile ships from the northwest Georgia manufacturing facility within two weeks, accommodating fast turnarounds for tight project timelines. 

Fresh Designs Shine In Andreu World’s Showroom

We love a company that gives back. On show at the Spanish manufacturer’s brand-new third-floor Mart showroom, encompassing a sprawling 20,000 square feet, is Valencia. The sculptural stool by Interior Design Hall of Famer Patricia Urquiola is a tribute to its namesake—the city in which Andreu World is rooted—and all proceeds go toward helping communities affected by the area’s October 2024 floods. The designer describes the stool’s sinuous, ribbed form as a hybrid between driftwood and woven Mediterranean baskets. Intriguingly, Valencia is 3D-printed from a sustainable mixture of cork and polylactic acid, a bioplastic used in biodegradable bottles. Also on view during NeoCon is Piergiorgio Cazzaniga’s Sir, a sleek, ultra-versatile modular seating system available any which way: as an armchair, a chaise, and two- and three-seaters with straight segments or 30-, 60-, or 90-degree curves.

Designtex’s Vibrant Fabrics Nod To A Noted Pattern

Meet you at the Monaco Grand Prix? Racetrack, a new indoor/outdoor textile from the applied materials manufacturer, alternates solid-colored plush velvet stripes with black-and-white-check strips resembling a final-lap flag and produced in a raffia-style texture. Corresponding polypropylene upholstery Emblem is a small-scale checkered basketweave made from tapelike nylon snaffled from the fashion industry. It, too, resembles natural raffia. “Racetrack and Emblem make me daydream,” says Designtex VP of design Catherine Stowell. “They conjure up sumptuous spaces, delightful hospitality, and a love of intricate detail.” Finally, there’s Convene, a Sunbrella solution-dyed acrylic-polyester with a hexagonal motif and subtle pinstripe. Talk about a trio of attention-grabbing, summer-ready fabrics.

Sink Into This Stylish, Modular Seating System

A benefit of modular systems is that they can be endlessly updated and iterated. Such is the case for Foster + Partners Industrial Design, which expands on its versatile, beam-based Bay System by adding coordinating accessory elements to the mix: round ottomans, linear and curved benches, and side tables. These new intros further enhance the series’ flexibility and applicability; they’re suitable everywhere from private offices to busy public spaces and also work well with other products in Poltrona Frau’s Work-Lab portfolio. The comfy poufs, available in two heights, are surprisingly easy to move, owing to their small handle and lightweight beech-and-poplar structure. Common to the poufs and benches, whose cushy but durable padding can be covered in a wide range of PelleFrau leathers or Kvadrat fabrics, is a subtle curvature toward the base that gives units the impression of floating. The side tables come in fixed-height or adjustable versions and feature metal columns topped in oak or Fenix-NTM, a super-matte, food-safe, water- and fingerprint-resistant surface. Check out the new Bay System accessories in the Haworth showroom. 

Patricia Urquiola Puts Her Stamp On Milan’s Casa Brera Hotel

Indisputably, Milan is a crossroads of all things cultural: architecture and design, music and art, fashion and food—a storied past and a pulsating present. Add the ubiquitous presence of la Milano bene—the city’s stylish upper crust—and you get a snapshot of a place that may at first seem formal and formidable but quickly turns warm and welcoming once you breach its polished surface.

That’s much like one of its newest hotels: Casa Brera, a Marriott Luxury Collection property in a former office building transformed by Interior Design Hall of Fame member Patricia Urquiola, who describes herself as “100 percent architect or 100 percent designer, depending on the moment and time of day.” Both areas of her professional expertise came into play on the project, which challenged the Spanish-born Urquiola to “rebuild and rethink everything, focusing on what we had,” because of the original structure’s significance to her adopted city, where roots run deep. “Milan obliges you to put these thoughts together,” adds the designer, whose installation “The Other Side of the Hill” is currently on view at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia.

Experience Luxury At The Casa Brera Designed By Patricia Urquiola

Located in the hotel’s namesake artsy district and just a short walk from the fabled Teatro alla Scala opera house, the building was completed by notable architect Pietro Lingeri in 1958. Named La Centrale for the financial company it first housed, the structure comprises an eight-story block flanked by a pair of four-story wings. Its pink-granite facade—a strictly rectilinear composition of aluminum-framed windows—exemplifies the severe geometry characteristic of the Italian rationalist movement. Vacant since 2016, when its last occupant was Boston Consulting Group, the mid-century workplace had no connection to the hospitality realm. The founder and creative director of Studio Urquiola not only had to respectfully execute its transformation into a five-star hotel but also, as she notes, “research and open a new narrative about contemporary luxury. It’s all about creating a sensation.”

A sense of welcome begins on the street, where Urquiola and her team have used the building’s setback to insert a two-level café terrace, festooned with umbrellas and greenery. To one side, the main entry leads to the ground-floor lobby, public spaces, and amenities, all of which consistently reference the envelope’s architecture, particularly its rectangular geometries. These are expressed through a materials palette that favors stone and marble, and a recurrent grid motif— together forming a kind of narrative thread, or what Urquiola, following her teacher and mentor Achille Castiglioni, calls “the fundamental element”: the foundation upon which she based her design process.

A Warm Welcome Into Casa Brera

Reception introduces the scheme with gutsy blocks of Rosso Levanto and Verde Alpi marble forming the sculptural check-in desk, surrounded by walls paneled in walnut ribbing and slabs of Verde Antigua. The same stones—joined by Breccia Damascata and Grigio Trambiserra—compose the floor’s grandly scaled matrix pattern, which extends into the lobby lounge, a magnetic space outfitted with a massive Verde Alpi bar, its front punctuated with rows of circular indentations. For those in the know—or cinephiles—it’s a nod to another Italian rationalist and green-marble enthusiast, Piero Portaluppi, whose nearby Villa Necchi Campiglio memorably appeared in the movie I Am Love. Since Urquiola couldn’t raise the lounge ceiling, she created the illusion of height with a reflective overhead expanse of mirror-chrome panels edged in black, while furnishing the room with low-slung pieces she’s authored for various blue-chip brands. Presiding over it all is Le Ballerine, a commissioned photograph by Tim Walker that evokes the dynamism of dance performances at the neighboring opera house.

In outfitting Odachi, the reception-adjacent restaurant serving Japanese-inspired cuisine, Urquiola eschewed overt visual connections to the country. “It’s personal, my ideas of Japan,” she acknowledges. That translates to simple, clean-lined tables with marble or back-painted glass tops accompanied by her Oru chairs in graphic black; paper-lanternlike custom ceiling fixtures; and custom fabric with an abstract floral pattern covering some walls. Fine Milanese fare awaits at the 70-seat Scena, tucked behind the lounge and accessed via a broad corridor and an impressively appointed entry vestibule—walnut-paneled walls and ceiling, pale marble flooring and host stand, and the occasional piece of gallery-worthy art.

Custom Fixtures + Floral Fabric Ooze Warmth

But nothing matches the panoramic vista—everything from the Duomo and Castello Sforzesco to Zaha Hadid’s Generali Tower—enjoyed from the rooftop Etereo, which includes both indoor and outdoor dining spaces. Inside, a dramatically gridded backlit-fabric ceiling presides over a commanding pink-marble bar and Pierre Jeanneret’s oak-and-cane Capitol Complex chairs set around custom tables. Outside, the pavilionlike terrace—newly built out atop the roof—is a particular point of pride for Urquiola. “It gives a vertical dimension to the project,” she observes, “and another way to see the city.”

The 116-room property offers 11 guest-room typologies, including 15 suites. “They’re not large,” notes Urquiola, whose interpretation of luxury isn’t based on size but on material richness and spatial character. She brings the quietly sumptuous palette of the public zones into the private ones: Walnut paneling clads many walls, marble is used lavishly in the bathrooms, checkerboard wool rugs soften floors, fine artworks abound, and custom furnishings by top-tier Italian manufacturers—like the brass-and-leather headboards—appear throughout. This last was particularly vital. “Through craftsmanship and industrialization, these companies represent the culture of Milan,” Urquiola concludes. “They represent the culture I come from.”

Walk Through The Casa Brera Hotel

It’s All About Creating A Relaxing Sensation

POLIFORM: CUSTOM FF&E, CUSTOM ARCHITECTURAL FINISHES.

FROM FRONT ALI YIKIN GLASS ART STUDIO: CONCAVE MIRROR (SUITE). TATO: PENDANT FIXTURES. PAOLA PARONETTO: CERAMICFRAME MIRRORS. MODULARTE: CUSTOM PLANTER. CASSINA: CHAIRS, TABLE (SUITE), BLACK ARMCHAIRS, SOFA, LOW TABLE (LOUNGE), PARASOLS (PATIO), CHAIRS (ETEREO), CHAISE LOUNGES, LANTERNS (POOL). MOROSO: GREEN ARMCHAIRS, ORANGE ARMCHAIRS (LOUNGE). LUXURY CARPET STUDIO: RUGS (LOUNGE), CARPET TILE (HALL). ANDREU WORLD: BARSTOOLS (LOUNGE), CHAIRS (ODACHI). OFFICINA CIANI: CUSTOM CHAIRS (PATIO). DEDAR: UPHOLSTERY FABRIC. GLAS ITALIA: CONSOLE (VESTIBULE), MIRROR (DARK BATHROOM). SANTA & COLE: FLOOR LAMP (GUEST ROOM 1), PAPER PENDANT FIXTURE (ODACHI). CAPORALI GROUP: FABRIC LOUVRES (ODACHI). FLOS: TABLE LAMPS (ODACHI, ETEREO). ALLIED MAKER: PENDANT FIXTURE (DARK BATHROOM). AGAPE: SINK (DARK BATHROOM), TUB (SUITE BATHROOM). VERY WOOD: ARMCHAIR (GUEST ROOM 1 & 3). BERSAGLIO: CUSTOM UMBRELLAS (POOL). MARAZZI: WALL TILE, POOL TILE. THROUGHOUT STEPEVI: CUSTOM GUEST-ROOM RUGS. VIAMANCINELLI: CUSTOM TABLE LAMPS, CUSTOM PENDANT FIXTURES. KVADRAT; VESCOM: CURTAIN FABRIC.