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LA BELLA VITA

BY CHRIS CLEMANS
ts 5 oclock on a pleasant fall day, and I am sharing a bottle of wine with the four principle designers of AvroKOKristina ONeal, Adam Farmerie, William Harris and Greg Bradshawat their recently opened Noho restaurant, Saxon + Parole. Mr. Harris is excitedly trying to explain their rms design philosophy. When Kristina and I were in China, we were given a tour of an artist compound where there was this amazing manicured garden, he begins, glancing around the table at his partners for nods of conrmation. The guide was taking us through it, pointing out all sorts of beautiful plants and arrangements, and then at the end there was this really gnarled, beguiling, twisted tree that was so out of place and di erent from the rest of the garden. So we asked our guide what it was doing there, and in his broken English he said, Well, that is here because it is best ugly. It was there because it was an interrupt to all these beautiful things around it. It made the space better. It was sublimely imperfect. It was gorgeous because it wasnt so self-consciously manicured. The AvroKO team has taken this best ugly philosophy and run with it, creating a global design business with projects including the W Hotel in Bangkok, Kid Robots Los Angeles and New York stores, and, of course, restaurants, which the four friends and former classmates at Carnegie Mellon professionally rst collaborated on 10 years ago. Mr. Bradshaw and Mr. Farmerie had just started an architecture group called Avro Design, and Ms. ONeal and Mr. Harris were growing their own media branding and concept shop, Ko Media. Together, they opened eatery Public with Mr. Farmeries brother Brad as chef. Inspired by the depression era of public works projectsthink oak

TASTE, INCORPO
library cataloges and shiny o ce boxesthe Nolita restaurant swept the 2004 James Beard Foundation Awards, taking home the prizes for Outstanding Design and Outstanding Graphic, an unprecedented achievement. They were the cool new kids on the block, recalls Cindy Allen, editor in chief of Interior Design magazine. They had this industrial, yet sleek, organic style. They were one of the early design rms to create what was then becoming a trendy style. As Mr. Harris puts it, Public was the

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ORATED
INSIDE NEW YORK DESIGN FIRM AVROKOS RISE TO THE TOP
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THE AVROKO TEAM PHOTOGRAPHED BY PHIL CHANG COURTESY OF AVROKO

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the minutiae like the labels on the house wine. When they rst started, this one-stop-shop approach was rare in the world of design. We all realized very early on that we didnt necessarily have to play by the rules, explains Mr. Farmerie. Architects didnt just have to do architecture, and people who are supposed to be doing branding didnt have to only do that. And, once we realized we could swap across these di erent mediums, we found that we could also swap across di erent types of work. A design rm didnt just have to do work for clients. We could also open a restaurant ourselves. It was like taking the shackles o ." An architecture and design rm owning and operating its projectsthe technical term for such a project is self-propelledremains uncommon in the hospitality design industry, and some were skeptical. There was a little bit of , Oh, so you think you can do all these things and do them well, do you? recalls Ms. ONeal. We denitely had to prove ourselves. But, overall, I think people maybe enjoyed or admired our chutzpah, our willingness to do whatever we wanted to do. Interior Design was one such admirer. Thats courageous risk-taking at its best, especially in the times weve had, she says. Thats not waiting around for the phone to ring, and everyone can respect that. Another venture that paid o was AvroKOs early exploration of the Asian market. Initially, the driving motivation was a erce interest, especially on the part of Mr. Harris, in the cultural and artistic opportunities that Asia o ered designers. We love the amazing access to artisans, the amazing access to woodcraft and pottery, he says, his eyes lighting up. All the stu that everyone ships back to the States and marks up a gazillion times is right in your back yard. Theres actually a better source for antique American liquor bottles in a Bangkok street market than you can nd here! While it may have been purely an artistic venture at rst, expanding eastward proved to be a fortuitous business move for AvroKO as well, and theyve since opened an o ce in Hong Kong and a studio in Bangkok. With demand slowing signicantly in the past couple of years at home, and the economies of China and other Asian countries exploding, almost all major design and hospitality groups have moved a signicant portion of their business east. According to Interior Design, which publishes a ranked list of the biggest Hospitality Giants (on which AvroKO holds the 57th spot), the amount of overseas projects a typical Hospitality Giant works on annually has increased from 19 percent in 2006 to 34 percent in 2011. AvroKo estimates as much as one-third of their business is now located in Asia.

launching pad. Clients began lining up outside AvroKOs door looking to work with the restaurant industrys rising design stars. Since Public, the team has received countless accolades for the spaces theyve created together and, while theyve branched out to hotels and retail work, restaurants remain their true passion. Were history nerds, admits Mr. Harris. We love to read about and research times when spaces were less design-conscious and it was more purely a matter of function. Functionality, utility, practicalitythose are really strong tenets in our approach to design and you
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can nd them in all our projects. The folded horse blankets at Saxon + Parole, for example, serve to dampen sound between two of the dining rooms. At Public, repurposed post o ce boxes double as wine lockers in which loyal patrons can stash a bottle or two. The foursome believe one of the keys to their success is a holistic approach toward design. With two architects in Mr. Farmerie and Mr. Bradshaw and two graphic artists in Mr. Harris and Ms. ONeal, the group is able to tackle every aesthetic aspect of a project, from the bigpicture structural design of the space down to

THE MONDAY ROOM NEW YORK PHOTO BY MICHAEL WEBER

LAVO NEW YORK PHOTO COURTESY OF AVROKO

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LILY & BLOOM HONG KONG ABOVE BELOW RIGHT

PHOTOS BY JASON LANG BELOW THE MONDAY ROOM NEW YORK PHOTO BY MICHAEL WEBER ALL COURTESY OF AVROKO

Even if there was no money in Asia, wed still probably be working in Asia right now, says Mr. Harris. Wed be banging our heads against the wall, screaming, Hire us! Hire us! Mr. Farmerie chimes in, only half joking. I will say that we were very lucky to have been there when we decided that was an interest of ours, adds Ms. ONeal, because during the recession Asia was much more active than the States, and it still is. They foursome consider themselves lucky in other ways, too, and value their story as a shared one above all else. Our getting together was as much a lifestyle choice as it was a business decision, explains Ms. ONeal. Being good friends and getting together and doing this work? Oh, thats good fun! Lets do that! said laughs as she pours the last few drops of the Wol er Estate ros into Mr. Farmeries empty glass. Every year since we started all this, weve

"WE ALL REALIZED VERY EARLY ON THAT WE DIDNT NECESSARILY HAVE TO PLAY BY THE RULES " EXPLAINS MR FARMERIE

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"EVEN IF THERE WAS NO MONEY IN ASIA WED STILL PROBABLY BE WORKING THERE RIGHT NOW SAYS MR HARRIS WED BE BANGING OUR HEADS AGAINST THE WALL SCREAMING HIRE US! HIRE US! ADDS MR FARMERIE

written down on a piece of paper whatever we could imagine in our dream worlds of living, she continues. In other words, where you wanted to live, how you wanted to live, what you wanted to do, we wrote it all down. A silly exercise, maybe, but we found it somehow alluring. Yeah, and you dont think about it for years

because youre so busy, says Mr. Harris. But then youll go back and look at it, and youll see that you wrote something like, What if we could only have our own restaurant? That would be amazing! And you read that sitting in your own restaurant. And its just like, wow, that actually happened.

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SAXON AND PAROLE NEW YORK BELOW BEAUTY AND ESSEX AND PUBLIC ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF AVROKO