Decoration & Design Building: A Design Resource for All

There are many design resources in the professional designer’s handbook. These resources may seem clandestine or out of reach to the regular, non-design-professional person but actually there are many that are accessible to anyone, if you know where to look. One such resource is the design buildings located in many major cities across the world. In Manhattan, there are three major design centers or buildings: the Decoration & Design Building, the New York Design Center and the Architects and Designers Building. All three of these buildings are open to the public as well as provide shopping and in-house design services to anyone who would like to use them.

Now, designers are not too keen on you knowing this and to be honest some of the showrooms in these buildings aren’t either. Why? Well, perhaps it is because they feel the value of their service is compromised if there isn’t some exclusivity about the business. Or perhaps they don’t feel regular, non-design-professionals aren’t qualified to know what to buy or how much to buy and need some guidance in the process in order to make it easier. Whatever the reason some designers have, there is a sentiment shared among the design centers in NYC that welcomes anyone who wishes to walk through the doors and browse and/or shop in the showrooms.

Today we are profiling the Decoration & Design Building located in midtown Manhattan (diagonally across from the Bloomingdales flagship store). It has 18 floors filled with 120 showrooms like Kravet, Holland & Sherry,  Fortuny , Ralph Lauren, Jerry Pair, Noblis, Dakota Jackson, the Silver Peacock, Niedermaier, Pierre Frey, Schumacher, Gracie, Andrew Martin, Christopher Hyland and Artistic Frame (many of whom we have featured before on this blog). The quality and selection are outstanding and it is a challenge to leave the building without tons of inspiration and a wish list a mile long!

Welcome to the Decoration & Design Building!

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Creative Types: Peter Bynum, Artist

Inspiration in its purest form comes from nature and great artist must find unique and inspiring ways to share their interpretation of the world around them. Introducing Peter Bynum. We first spied Peter's work on display in the Mansion in May 2012 showhouse and it was definitely the most alluring, visually stunning and unique focal point in any of the 40+ rooms. Why? It was an illuminated, back-lit, glass-painted work of art and it radiated beauty.

Peter, a former creative director in NYC, decided to take his background in philosophy, aesthetics, ideology, and epistemology to his art studio on the banks of the Hudson River in Upstate New York and examine the natural properties of paint. When working with paint on clear surfaces (first plexiglass and then glass), he found it unvieled its natural, organic structure that includes a branching property. He tossed, splattered, dropped, dribbled, squished and mashed paint onto the glass surfaces and let it embrace its natural tendencies. He then mounted between one to six painted panes of glass one in front of the other and threw in illumination via light. The backlight, that is customizable with a dimmer, make his works of art "breathe light" and "transcend their physical properties, appearing soft, organic, and ephemeral" when viewed from a distance (Dede Young, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art). The outcome is truly a beauty to behold.

We spoke with Peter to find out more about what inspires him and what museums and galleries he frequents as well as some other illuminating questions as to what creatively makes Peter tick.

 Peter Bynum

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