If entering Avenue Road 8A feels intimate, it’s because founder Stephan Weishaupt approached it like a personal pied-à-terre. “I started as if I was designing a place to live for myself,” he says. “I hope people feel like they are being welcomed into our home.” Located above the company’s existing Manhattan outpost, the new 5,000-square-foot showroom, designed with the New York–based architecture studio of Caroline McKeough, conjures a vision of an idealized abode—one that still manages to feel livable.
Weishaupt and McKeough worked directly with Avenue Road’s coterie of collaborators, including Obumex and Apure by Porsche Design Studio, to integrate disparate products into a single design. “People aren’t looking for a monobrand vignette pulled directly off of a magazine or catalogue page,” he says. “They want a curated approach mixing different pieces, as they would with the clothes they wear.” In other words, you wouldn’t buy a head-to-toe outfit as it appears on the runway—so why should you purchase a living room straight from an ad? Indeed, after seeing the effortless cohesion between Kvadrat/Raf Simons textiles, door and wall systems from Aladin by Glas Italia, and furniture from Yabu Pushelberg, one wonders if Weishaupt ever finds himself at the showroom on Sundays—when it’s closed.
