Its new showroom, designed by Matthew Baird Design of Manhattan, was inspired by the ancient city that became Beijing.
The theatrical auto showroom designed by Frank Lloyd Wright at 430 Park Avenue, at 56th Street, had displayed a number of European brands over the years, notably Mercedes-Benz from 1957 to 2012.
Fifteen kitchen styles, such as Flux, above, by Giugiaro Design, are on display in the 10,000-square-foot SoHo showroom, designed by SpaCe Architects.
The 11,500-square-foot showroom, designed by Richard Kronick, of Gerner Kronick + Valcarcel Architects, will carry modern furniture brands like Artifort, Montis and Walter Knoll, and is open to consumers as well as the trade.
If I called designers and said, 'There's this homeless woman, can she have this outfit?' they'd be like, 'No, it's got to go back to the showroom.' " But now Mr. Bloch has hooked up with a showroom designed to give away clothes to women "in transition" from welfare.
I'd been in the garment center for so long, and it was starting to feel very oppressive: the intensity of the streets, the amount of people, the amount of factories still, even now; the amount of showrooms, design studios, all so jammed into a three-to-four block area.
Or maybe they should function as "showrooms," designed to sell books on consignment from the publisher?
And visible from a cutout in the center of the store is a large, jaw-dropping koi pond, stocked with fish imported from Japan at a cost of $50,000, in the basement, where there are also showrooms designed for big-fish clients.
