Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Age: 42
Occupation: Architect.
Instagram: @sarahcarpenter.studio
Hometown: I moved a lot growing up, but spent the majority of my childhood in a small farm town on the Western border of Texas and Oklahoma.
Studio location: Brooklyn.
Describe what you make: Spaces for people to eat and drink. Working in hospitality, you start with a blank slate for every project; each has a different concept, context, constraints, and set of needs—and on hyper speed. It can be an intensive process, but I still get a lot of joy from bringing a seed of a thought into a realized physical space.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: For me, it’s not one project, but looking at our studio’s projects in relation to each other. Our studio has a way of working, but I generally avoid being driven by a specific style. Growing up in so many different contexts, I’m always trying to make the best out of a given set of variables. That’s more interesting to me than just getting the fanciest/nicest thing, although that’d probably be a better business decision. Our clients come to our studio with a lot of trust and I care about giving them the best version of their dream, be it restrained or exuberant. I don’t want to be boxed in. I want to do it all.
Describe the problem your work solves: Being an architect can feel like playing detective; executing a specific design detail starts with having control five (or ten) steps back. If a project isn’t structured correctly, you will be continuously moving against gravity. Hospitality spaces have a lot of requirements; they need to be able to hold both the emotional resonance and the practical needs. Some of our busier projects see between 500 and 1,000 people in them daily. That’s like having a raging party in your space everyday. For ten years.
Describe the project you are working on now: Our studio is working on a disco-inspired wine bar for a group of young sommeliers. The design directive was to embody the infamous purple sunset in Manila. It’s pretty out there, but I love it when clients are willing to commit to a vision.
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: We just opened Massara, the new sister restaurant of Chef Stefano Secchi’s Michelin-starred Rezdôra. The space is incredibly special because it’s a standalone, two-story building in the middle of the Flatiron District and we were therefore able to create connections between the floors and carve out space. I just saw on social media that a group of world-renowned chefs had an after-hours, 1am booze-filled dinner at the chef’s table (there were toasts, so many toasts). This is exactly how I pictured the dining room being experienced; Chef Secchi looked so happy and what’s better than feeling like you had a part in creating that joy?
We also recently completed a new space near Rockefeller Center for WatchHouse, the esteemed British coffee brand. This was their first U.S. location and we’ve heard consistently from many sources that it’s their favorite coffee house in the city. The design, of course, is only one part of that success, but it’s an honor to have the opportunity to work with teams who are so good at what they do.
What you absolutely must have in your studio: I’ve been lugging this massive wool shag rug around from studio space to studio space for the last eight years. It’s such a pain and still sheds like a German Shepherd, but it’s like our office pet and I love the warmth it adds to our space
What you do when you’re not working: I have two beautiful, high-energy autistic boys (ages 5 and 6) so while I’d love to tell you that I have a culturally rich interior life, my kids like math and bowling, so that’s what I do. Once a week, I go to the theater and watch a movie by myself—my life is loud and I find that I really crave one night a week where I can say zero words.
Sources of creative envy: My kids’ brains work very differently than my own and it’s been a revelation for me. My little one is object-obsessed and will create these messy and elaborate Rube Goldberg–esque inventions (a stick holding a broom, balancing on a hula hoop and swinging a yo-yo). My oldest’s art compositions consist exclusively of loops of math equations and they are rigid, yet bizarre, and so, so beautiful. It makes me want to both burst into tears and crawl inside his head.
I think I’ve come to realize in the last few years that our own creative process is hardwired into us and doesn’t always have to feel like inspiration. That has taken some pressure off of feeling like I have to be “creative” in a certain way in order to be successful.
The distraction you want to eliminate: People pleasing, especially when it’s at the detriment of a project. In the last few years, I’ve become much more confident in my ability to say, “what you’re asking for right now goes against what you actually want. You may be slightly frustrated in this moment, but I’m protecting the future you.”
Concrete or marble? My real answer to all of these is, “both, it depends on what we are talking about.” But: marble.
High-rise or townhouse? Townhouse.
Remember or forget? Forget.
Aliens or ghosts? Ghosts.
Dark or light? Dark.
Portrait photography by Brian W Ferry.
