Over the years, Italian natural stone specialists Salvatori have worked with top-flight international designers for product and décor collaborations—fellow Italians Piero Lissoni and Elisa Ossino, of course, but farther-flung talents like Kengo Kuma and John Pawson. For their New York showroom, however, they decided to go local, enlisting Yabu Pushelberg to conceive a sharp, chic 6,400-square-foot duplex in SoHo.
“It was really a no-brainer,” says CEO Gabriele Salvatori, who previously enlisted the pair to design collections including the shapely Anima and modular Punto sets of bathroom fixtures. “They were instrumental in helping us find the perfect location at 102 Wooster Street,” he says. And not just perfect but, as Glenn Pushelberg explains, “perfectly imperfect. When we started going out in New York in the ‘70s, it was rough and tumble. There was a frisson to it. New York was perfect through its imperfections in a way that made you crave it even more, and is still like that today. This feeling is what we wanted to capture in Salvatori’s showroom.”
That old edge is all over the ground-floor level, with original cast iron columns caged in black steel sleeves, and floor-to-ceiling brick walls and original flooring showing off the patina earned over the decades. Display vignettes gather within a custom modular wall system. Below, an apartamento offers a fully operational kitchen carved from marble, and shelving to show off Salvatori’s sculptural series like Yabu Pushelberg’s own architectural objects known as the Village | Assembly. “Going from creating products to interiors felt like a natural, full-circle moment, since we know each other so well, both as collaborators and friends,” says George Yabu. “We think you’ll be able to feel that in their showroom.”
