The Apartment was the first design concept store in New York City and was set up as a functioning living space in SoHo where we presented objects of desire in a functioning context. You could lunch, watch tv, even shower, and buy everything you touched, from the Japanese toothpaste to the Italian sofa. We shaped our process around a simple philosophy: that since everything in the world is designed, we must be attentive and curate our lives only with those objects that we find personally relevant, useful and beautiful. Prioritizing community and consumer education, we were able to bring in a new audience to appreciate design for what it does, not just what it looks like in a glass box.
Originating as a retail store, we quickly grew into an agency, doing for clients what we had done for ourselves, tell stories, with a beginning, middle and end, even if not necessarily in that order. We conceptualized events, designed products, spaces and invitations, all in the name of creating a client’s narrative.
PRESS.
FUN.
CLIENT: The Apartment. PROJECT: Our own Valentine’s Day Event.
CLIENT: The Apartment x Storefront For Art and Architecture. PROJECT: Shopping bags for the iconic gallery and shop in NYC.
CLIENT: The Apartment. PROJECT: ICFF event presenting our newest furniture collection… Our way of poking fun at an industry that is always trying to convince us that we need another chair. Below, the marketing campaign for the event.
CLIENT: The Apartment. PROJECT: A translucent and multi-leveled invitation for the opening of our renovation of the YMCA (see here.)
CLIENT: The Apartment. PROJECT: To highlight our favorite over-rated icons as eye (and actual) candy, Oprah Winfrey and Frank Gerhy in this case.
MEET.
Based in the storied space we inhabited for ten years at 101 Crosby Street, Meet at The Apartment was designed to succeed our retail store by a partnership consisting of Wooster Collective, Electric Artists and The Apartment to re-interpret the concept of meeting spaces and make the experience more productive and more fun. Since the days of The Apartment Design Store, we have known, and relied on, the power of community for ideas to expand, minds to be changed and inspiration to bloom and Meet at The Apartment is the way to take advantage of that power.
Sara and Marc Schiller have since developed the company to encompass two more locations.