A slew of galleries that look and feel like the chicest apartments you’ll ever see are popping up in Tribeca—Quarters and Giancarlo Valle’s Annex, to name two—but now, AD100 interior and furniture designer Laura Gonzalez has joined their ranks. Her first showroom outside of Paris, a light-filled aerie on Franklin Street, opened its doors last Tuesday, and Gonzalez invited AD PRO Directory members and other esteemed guests for a first look inside.
Gonzalez has roots in the city—she has notably worked on New York’s Cartier flagship—and says that her choice to open an atelier in Manhattan was inevitable. “New York is the city which is closest to Paris in terms of its multicultural mix, its art, its architecture,” Gonzalez tells AD PRO, also noting her existing American clientele, and the prior residential projects she’s completed in the city. “There was no question! It was a direct second step.”
As a trained architect, Gonzalez has an eye for blended historical references within the Art Nouveau and Art Deco traditions that informed her studies. When it comes to her furniture and interiors, she follows a similar approach: “I never go in one style, I always mix things together.” There is a difference between her French and American showrooms, though, the most noticeable being a spatial one: The 1,900-square-foot space in New York is much larger than its Parisian counterpart, and quintessentially industrial by way of its lofty ceilings and window panes. In the morning, Gonzalez tells me, light bounces off the nearby brick buildings and casts a pink glaze over the showroom’s back area. Of course, she took this into consideration when choosing the warm-hued paintings near the custom fireplace, which is the showroom’s pièce de résistance. Covered in swirls and canine forms, the commanding element was crafted by longtime collaborator Laurent Dufour.
As Directory members began to arrive early in the evening, they, alongside AD’s editorial team, mutually fawned over Gonzalez’s Lilypad chandelier, one of which bloomed over the showroom’s dining tables. (A yellow-hued version illuminated the Fuji sofa Gonzalez and I perched on during our conversation—she points out that it was made from an eco-friendly resin.) Throughout the showroom, nature inspires her furniture’s forms—like the Enoki tables, the Himawari floral lamps, and the gigantic shell-studded vase near the showroom’s entrance that could’ve been unearthed from Atlantis. The meticulous craftsmanship on these pieces are birthed from a very deliberate approach. For Gonzalez, designing furniture may take up to a year in its process, and often harnesses traditional techniques such as raku.
Gonzalez’s chic, organic vision was baked into the stylish opening event, designed by Lucinda Constable of The Table New York. Guests pecked at a sprawling mosaic of finger foods: Lev’s miniature eggplant sandwiches, crudités with herby dip, fire-roasted flatbread, and crispy samosas. Champagne and cucumber water was there for sipping, but you’d be remiss to not try a white negroni frothing from Arley Marks’s ceramic fountain. And Fox Fodder Flowers decked the place out in a botanical array that matched Gonzalez’s designs.
In a toast with Amy Astley, AD’s global editorial director and editor in chief, Gonzalez noted that the showroom does not require appointments to visit and, extending the laissez-faire attitude of Paris, welcomes shoppers to stop in for une tasse de café. Maybe atop Gonzalez’s endlessly cool Rainbow table?
