AD100: Discover The New York Interior Designers of 2023 (Part II)

Introducing the 2023 AD100 – today’s top talents in interior decoration, architecture, and landscape design. When we’re looking for incredible interiors that are liveable yet stunning, these are the names we always come back to. Stay tuned and discover the interior designers from New York of 2023’s AD100!

Apartment 48

AD100: Discover The New York Interior Designers of 2023 (Part II) — © Nick Parisse

From 1994 to 2008, the Indiana-born interior designer did so from his famed New York City store, Apartment 48, where he piled home items into a fictitious residence long before doing so was the usual. Rayman Boozer tells AD he’s all about “putting nice vibrations out in the world.” Boozer eventually switched from running a shop to decorating when loyal consumers transformed into loving customers. For example, his first undertaking was a 14th Street studio for a devoted fan of Apartment 48. Since then, he has designed unhurried, self-assured spaces that are bursting with color, pattern, and an unforced air of joy—spaces that, in other words, make you grin.

Ash

They not only captured the attention of the design community when they transformed a landmarked strip club and brothel in Providence, Rhode Island into a chic hotel called The Dean, but they also created a template that could be “redesigned and duplicated” all over the nation, as Will Cooper puts it. In 2018, they converted a 19th-century church in New Orleans into Hôtel Peter & Paul and the historic Wurlitzer Building in downtown Detroit into The Siren. That’s not all, though. Ash also has a luxury staging company and designs furniture and furnishings for homes. Their design work is based on the structure, the area, and the location, according to Cooper. Every project develops from there.

Ashe Leandro

Reinaldo Leandro once said, “It’s just all about texture; we never use patterns, wallpapers, or fabrics.” That is only one of the many guiding ideas that have helped him and his collaborator Ariel Ashe define their aesthetic since the duo’s 2008 New York City debut. Leandro, who was born in Venezuela, and Ashe, who was born in New Mexico and started her career as a set designer for Saturday Night Live, are all about cozy luxury. Ashe Leandro has built opulent mansions for celebrities like Seth Meyers, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Rashid Johnson over the previous ten years.

Billy Cotton

Billy Cotton began his career as an architect at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture, where he discovered a talent for conventional industrial skills. His company, which is now situated in Brooklyn, specializes in design, architecture, lighting, and furniture. Through the creation of highly customized rooms that embrace the mix-and-match idea, this multidisciplinary approach has developed into a signature style and ethos. It’s possible that this is the reason why he’s become a go-to for notable members of the art world including Lisa Yuskavage, Matvey Levenstein, Cindy Sherman, Carol Bove, and Gordon Terry. Billy Cotton published a monograph with Rizzoli in 2022.

Carlos Mota Inc.

Carlos Mota, a well-known stylist, creative consultant, and longtime worldwide style editor at AD, has embarked on a wide-ranging creative path that has organically equipped him to step into the position of interior designer in recent years. The title of his 2019 book, Beige Is Not a Color (Vendome Press), has turned into something of a rallying cry for aesthetes bored of plain decor. He has even created a stunning scenery wall covering for Pierre Frey. (This year, Mota launched G: Forever Green, a colorful sequel.) A new line of textiles and dinnerware for his Casamota collection will soon be available.

Corey Damon Jenkins

The success story of Corey Damen Jenkins was designed for television: During the 2009 recession, he went door-to-door in Michigan and won his first job. The Detroit native told AD in 2021 when he made his debut on the AD100 list, “I physically knocked on 779 doors in the dead of winter.” He was hired by HGTV after submitting the finished images to his website, where viewers selected him as the winner of the network’s design competition series. Now, the interior designer creates spaces for vivacious living; his creations are a magpie mélange of seductive colors and whimsical patterns. He describes his design concept as “new maximalist” and describes it as “a bold, continental combination of beauty and modernism.”

Dan Fink Studio

Whether he’s building an Art Deco-influenced classic car garage turned man cave in Los Angeles or a new lounge bathed in sunlight for the dancers of New York’s American Ballet Theatre, Dan Fink seeks to create spaces that mirror the beauty and harmony of the natural world. In recent commissions, Fink has incorporated French flair for residences at the Carlyle Hotel in New York and freshness and light for a VC fund’s Miami headquarters. A huge country mansion in Connecticut (with architecture by RAMSA) and an artist’s seaside retreat in the Long Island town of Bellport are among Fink’s other projects. His husband, designer Thomas O’Brien, also has a residence there.

David Kleinberg Associates

David Kleinberg is a skilled decorator in the traditional sense and a master of color, texture, size, and detail. Additionally, he firmly adheres to Billy Baldwin’s maxim that “suitability always prevails over fashion.” Kleinberg established his own Manhattan practice in 1997 after honing his vision at the prestigious companies Denning & Fourcade and Parish-Hadley. His one-of-a-kind rooms adhere to the classic qualities of elegance, beauty, usefulness, comfort, and, most importantly, relevance to the personalities of the owners in projects around the world. From a storied Beverly Hills house to a superyacht being built in Europe, Kleinberg has applied his sophisticated taste to a wide range of settings. All of these spaces are united by sophistication and spirit attuned to the cadence of contemporary life.

Elizabeth Roberts Architects

Few have contributed as much to the definition of that dream as Elizabeth Roberts has, as images of marital bliss in New York City have evolved from uptown penthouses to Brooklyn brownstones. A cult following has grown around the architect over the course of the previous 20+ years as a result of her innovative space design, show-stopping kitchens, and thoughtful material selections. In order to create eclectic environments that are never precious or faultless, but always comfortable, they adore working with people who have a strong point of view, says the architect, whose clients include actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, model Daria Werbowy, and clothing designer Ulla Johnson.

Gachot

John and Christine Gachot, a husband and wife design team, honed their sense of warm minimalism with a touch of theatricality when creating the Shinola Hotel in Detroit, Marc Jacobs’ West Village townhouse, and the SoHo flagship for beauty giant Glossier. According to the studio’s website, “Gachot develops work with a refined aesthetic and radical sense of place by fusing timeless craft with contemporary technology.” Their own residences, which also include this intriguingly contradictory design, include a Shelter Island colonial and the former home and studio of architect Paul Rudolph in Midtown Manhattan.

Green River Project

The New York-based Green River Project was established in 2017 by designer Aaron Aujla and architect Ben Bloomstein. “We will always reference artist-made homes,” says Aujla. They had previously worked with painters Nate Lowman and Robert Gober before joining forces. What started out as story-driven furniture collections that prioritized unfinished materials like unfinished mahogany, lauan and bamboo that had been stained with coffee, and dried tobacco leaves quickly developed into a full-fledged interiors practice that specialized in the kinds of wood-focused interiors that are becoming more and more well-liked all over the world.