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!

Sawyer | Berson

Even though a lot of design firms claim to be interdisciplinary, very few have the talent to master architecture, interior design, and landscape with Sawyer | Berson’s virtuosic ease. The New York City firm led by principals Brian Sawyer and John Berson embraces traditional and contemporary styles with equal distinction, whether it be creating a modernist manse of stucco and glass in the Hamptons, renovating a historic Manhattan townhouse, or creating a French neoclassical garden in New Orleans. Top clientele of Sawyer | Berson include Julianne Moore and Bette Midler.

Sheila Bridges Design

Sheila Bridges asserts that “good design should convey a story”. As a result, her collection of personal narratives for stylish living features varied and international spaces that are also “thoughtful, ageless, and utilitarian.” Sheila Bridges, a native of Philadelphia and a part-time resident of Reykjavik, graduated from Brown University, Parsons School of Design, and Italy’s prestigious Polimoda Fashion School. Her signature pattern, Harlem Toile, gives the classic French fabric a bracing African-American twist and has been transformed into wallpaper, fabrics, clothing (an October 2020 collaboration with Converse and Union Los Angeles), and furnishings (for e-commerce site The Inside).

Studio Giancarlo Valle

According to Giancarlo Valle, “design is fundamentally about conversation—between styles, cultures, objects, and people.” And hopefully, this dialogue produces pleasant surprises that please the listener. The designer is a representative of a new generation of talents dedicated to mediating a subtle reconciliation between the archetypes of the past and the spirit of the present. He is a product of cutting-edge companies like Snhetta and SHoP Architects. For instance, Valle’s limited-edition furniture for Magen H Gallery and Seventh House exhibits this sensibility with subtle eloquence. Artist Marilyn Minter, hotelier Kevin Wendle, and model Martha Hunt are among his impressive list of clients.

Victoria Hagan Interiors

Victoria Hagan’s interiors are distinguished by a strong sense of proportion, skillful mixes of materials and textures, and a warm neutral color scheme. They are crisply elegant and joyously modern. Since starting her business in Manhattan in 1991, Hagan has cultivated a devoted clientele of powerful businessmen, including Walt Disney chairman Bob Iger and Revlon CEO Ronald Perelman, for whom she has completed numerous projects in New York and Los Angeles. Homes of Victoria Hagan’s clientele usually feature stylish items from her name-brand furniture, fabric, and rug collections. Comfort, functionality, and scale are the three main focuses of Hagan’s work. “It’s essential to get those components properly.”

Workstead

Craftsmanship is something that Robert Highsmith, Stefanie Brechbühler, and Ryan Mahoney value highly as the founding members of the multidisciplinary design studio Workstead. They created a sensation with their remodel of The Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, not long after opening their doors in 2009. The team carefully renovated the old industrial structure into a hip, modern setting while preserving its historical roots. After it was finished, the project came to represent the company’s subsequent work. Workstead: Interiors of Beauty and Necessity (Rizzoli), a recent monograph that details the firm’s distinctive style, combines historical relics with modern sensibilities.

Bories & Shearron Architecture

Bories & Shearron Architecture was founded by architect Richard A. Bories and designer James Shearron. Their motto is “Good proportion, adaptability, and a spirit of creativity.” A Mott B. Schmidt mansion in Bedford Hills, New York; a new shingle-style property on the coast of Lake Michigan; and Grey Gardens in East Hampton are just a few of the noteworthy projects the traditionally grounded but modern-minded couple has worked on.

G. P. Schafer Architect

According to Gil Schafer, founding principal of the home firm G. P. Schafer Architect, “I create houses to be comfortable, courteous, unobtrusive, and to survive the test of time.” Although Schafer holds a master’s degree in architecture from Yale and an honorary doctorate in interior design from the New York School of Interior Design, architecture runs in his family; both his grandfather and great-great-grandfather were architects. Schafer’s fascination with “the great American house architects of the Colonial Revival period, such as Charles Platt and William Lawrence Bottomley,” who are the sources of his classical style, may be due to this lineage.

Steven Harris Architect

Steven Harris is known for creating meticulous yet laid-back minimalist homes that show the utmost respect for their surroundings. According to the architect, who is also a professor at Yale, “our utmost ambition is for our works to appear effortless and thoroughly integrated into their setting, whether urban or country.” Harris, who advocates a wholistic approach, frequently collaborates with the interior and landscaping company Rees Roberts + Partners, which he shares office space with. Steven Harris has a worldwide perspective that is reflected in his current far-flung projects, which range from an art museum in Texas to a medieval home in Dubrovnik, Croatia. He lists John Lautner, William Wurster, and Geoffrey Bawa as influences.

S. R. Gambrel Inc

The goal of S. R. Gambrel is straightforward, according to Steven Gambrel: “Create an environment that seems synonymous with the architectural vernacular and the essence of the client’s lifestyle.” In other words, although drawing on history, his interiors also have a lot of personality. In addition to working on residential and commercial projects from Aspen to Miami to Hong Kong since establishing S.R. Gambrel in 1996, the designer has also launched a lighting collaboration with The Urban Electric Co., an accessories line with Lacquer Company, and bathroom fixtures with Waterworks.

Miranda Brooks Landscape Design

Landscape architect Miranda Brooks’ design ethos is to “work with the land and nature with a deep understanding of and sympathy to its character; to connect the architecture to the natural world; to create a strong sense of place,” whether she is designing the front courtyard of the Chiltern Firehouse in London or Anna Wintour’s Long Island garden.

Studio Zewde

Sara Zewde, a New Yorker who was recently named a 2021 Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York, argues that “a lot of landscape architecture looks the same.” Zewde tells AD that she wants to fight this sameness in her work, even if it’s just by asking, “Why can’t we reconsider what a curb looks like?” Her work span from the development of Philadelphia’s famed and heavily Instagrammed Graffiti Pier to private gardens, hovering halfway between urban planning and landscape design.

© Architectural Digest

SEE ALSO

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

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