David Yurman Townhouse Flagship Boutique
New York, New York
Corten Steel with Etched Glass Façade with Integrated Displays and Lighting, Wood Doors and Custom Door Pulls
Design/Engineer, Engineer, Consult, Fabrication, Installation
We created a dramatic custom façade for the famed jewelry designer’s flagship Madison Avenue boutique. A key feature is its double-layered, delicately etched glass, which is semi-transparent but allows for a glamorous “billboard” effect from projecting images and videos from the inside. Our work also included the façade’s surround made from warm brown steel, and the fabricated blackened steel trim inside. The project drew on our skills in architectural metal fabrication, custom glass and wood detailing and integrated lighting, along with the nuts-and-bolts requirements of building safety codes, sprinkler systems and the reality of New York City construction.
Joe, who is a trained sculptor and understands how various materials have been used throughout history, collaborated with Yurman himself on the prototype for the store’s door pulls. The two artists worked and forged with oil-based clay kneaded with dog hair – similar to how the Romans mixed in rat hair to lend tensile strength to structures that can still be viewed today. Together they worked to create a prototype, which was used to create the finished door pulls from cast bronze. The pulls became part of the worldwide design standard for all of the David Yurman boutiques…and an example of how working creatively and collaboratively with our clients yields happy results.
