Nests Imperial or Fashionably Feathered

February 8, 2006 · Filed Under Architecture Matters · Comment
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A room in the building at 20 Pine Street, Armani/Casa, pictured in a sales brochure, has an oak table and cabinets, all by Armani/Casa. Joining the ranks of the interior-designer-branded residences in New York–Phillipe Starck-designed apartments in Lower Manhattan, and the Peter Marino’s residences uptown are fashion-designer-branded residences.

At 485 Fifth Avenue, the fashion designer Peter Som lent his name and a pattern from one of his spring dresses.

The runway, designed by Armani/Casa, the interior design arm of the Armani empire, is the centerpiece not of a fashion showroom but of an 8,000-square-foot sales office for the building, a condominium conversion with 409 units that will go on sale this month. Armani/Casa designed both the public spaces and the apartments in the Zen-rigorous Armani aesthetic, with massive clean-lined furnishings and earth and fog colors that wash like a tide over the public spaces.

If by “we” we include “architects”. Architecture could use a little more looking-good, a good branding and marketing campaign, something popular yet glamorous, to sell good architecture to a wider audience.