Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch met in Hollywood – but later transitioned from designing movie sets to more permanent architecture. And the transition has clearly worked for them! Ten years after starting their architecture firm, recent projects include the Ace Hotel, the Breslin, The Standard, and a ground-up building at 211 Elizabeth St. (Scroll down for images.) Everything they do shares a thoroughness and an excruciating attention to detail. See more at romanandwilliams.com
The Breslin Bar and Restaurant
We’re always really interested in when people take the jump from being employed to being self-employed. When did that happen for you two?
Robin: Neither of us had a conventional job for years as we were working freelance in film. We met working as production designers.
Which is project to project.
Right. It is essentially being self employed so the leap to our own company was a pretty natural transition. And we have always been more interested in finding creative challenges than in any traditional notion of job security.
How did you get into the film world?
I was painting and working in an art gallery after college and Stephen was working in an architecture firm. We didn’t know each other then but we both entered the film business through somewhat different avenues. Because of my background, I was hired by Martin Scorsese as visual consultant on The Age of Innocence and Stephen was hired because of his drawing skills to work as a draftsman. We met a few years and few films later.
Film is a wonderful venue for people interested in design. There are many different kinds of opportunities, and you get to do a lot of different kinds of projects. Film is also very fast paced. I think people would be surprised by how incredibly rigorous it is. The schedules, the budgets, the demands are really extraordinary. Not to mention the fact that the camera is a very discerning eye from which flaws and inconsistencies cannot hide. In film, we were able to experiment with a variety of spaces that have really helped hone our skills.
211 Elizabeth Street: Interior
How did that lead you to architecture?
Stephen was an architect before working in the film industry and his passion for architecture has been forever present, even in our film work. I always had a devotion and deep interest in space and design that finally found its outlet.
We worked in film for several years and did a lot of amazing projects. But we always wanted to get back to a place of permanence in our work, back to building things that were not temporary and made purely to be seen on screen. In film, you build these amazing things and then they are torn down. As designers, Stephen and I are very devoted to a deep sense of materiality, craft and detailing. Our work is never thin in the way people think of sets. And it was hard, after time, to watch the designs being dismantled after filming.
Right. And for sets you’re usually faking the materiality, right?
On many sets that’s the case, but we never worked that way. This is an interesting paradox. We had a reputation for designing sets that were solid and real. Some of the actors and directors who saw and worked on the sets were taken by how well they were built and how convincing they were. At one point we were working with Ben Stiller who said, “Work on my house, because this set looks better than my house.” That is, in a nutshell, how we made the transition to our own architecture and design firm.
Stephen and I have always been interested in making things, large and small. We’re married, and we came together, in part, because that’s a big tenet in both of our lives. We wanted to create our own world – including our own business which was about building and making and creating all sorts of environments and objects.
211 Elizabeth Street: Interior
What were your first projects as Roman & Williams?
Initially, we designed furniture and small residences and then were hired to do a large residential project for Ben Stiller. Ben just believed in our ability from having seen our work in, as we had done several films together and he knew we were building a design firm. This project led to some other high profile residential work.
Our goal was always to come back to New York permanently, which we did in 2003. We opened this office in 2003 and pretty quickly met Andre Balazs and starting working on the New York Standard. Ace Hotels followed, as well as our client for 211 Elizabeth Street – our first ground up building – so we had the opportunity to develop our commercial practice while we continued to design residences.
How do the different types of design you’ve done inform each other?
We’ve found that designing hotels takes us back, almost full-circle, to our film work. There is something very theatrical about designing hotels. We’re creating spaces where people will eat and party and it is fascinating to see how people interact with the space.
There is a narrative element to all of our work that also takes us back to film. We really spend a lot of time thinking about who will use the space and how, which is exactly what we did with the characters in our films.
It’s great to be in a space we designed and see where people gravitate and want to sit. Our hotel work is definitely affected by our residential work. We make hotels that are comfortable, and sort of groovy – never generic. I never was that interested in staying in a Hilton. It just never felt personal enough.
And, though I mentioned the theatrical element, it is important to distinguish between design that is very theatrical and a theatrical way of thinking about design. We don’t respond to spaces that feel too theatrical or hyper-designed.
Ace Hotel: Room
Yes, sometimes that feels very forced, like this is “Design” with a capitol D.
Exactly! It’s important to define that. You have a design blog, we have a design firm, but Stephen and I often say we don’t like design. Not everyone understands what we mean when we say that. We don’t like when design is forced, or it’s fussy, or it feels precious. A residential building or an interior is not necessarily meant to be like a piece of avant-garde art. It’s in a neighborhood and people are living in it. There are ways to show your interest in design through materials, details and careful craftsmanship, versus any overarching concept that eclipses its humanity.
How would you describe your approach to architecture?
In some ways, inventing some brand new shape that no one has seen before is not that difficult. We have very active imaginations too. But we’re much more interested in creating something that is original but that somehow has cues that people recognize, that make them feel comfortable. Our ideas always begin with an amalgam of things that we understand from the world around us. We all have references and memories. If you refer to those things that occupy your memory, and then develop and advance them, we think it makes for a very interesting experience.
211 Elizabeth Street is a good example. It has a certain modesty in terms of its design approach. It is a hand-laid brick building with traditional details and when we started people said “It’s an historical building.” But now that it is finished, people understand that we didn’t copy anything, that we combined a lot of different ideas to create something new, but something that looks like it might have been there forever. Now the feedback we get is that it is a very human building that feels at ease in the neighborhood and that makes people feel comfortable. We don’t think anyone really wants to live in a sculpture.
211 Elizabeth Street: Rendering
Speaking of history and tradition – Stephen does all of your presentation renderings by hand, right?
Yes, Stephen draws, and beautifully. The entire set of construction drawings for Kate Hudson’s house was hand drafted. That is really unheard of today. It’s this beautiful relic that I keep in the drawer.
Stephen calls himself Rip Van Winkle because so few people still hand draw. Our big document sets have to be in CAD. There’s just no other way to sustain the business – there aren’t enough people who draw, and you can’t move fast enough. But for presentations it’s incredible to be able to use hand drawings. Stephen also designs as he draws and draws as he designs. The process is one for him so he is working out design problems as he’s drawing. We have always worked together using drawing as our starting point.
It has an emotional aspect to it.
Precisely. It is so engaging, even mesmerizing. I mean that in a very practical way. But, that wasn’t the goal – he just loves to draw and that is how we express ideas. And that is how we’ve always run our business. We started as a little mom and pop shop, the two of us in the living room. Seeing that reaction was one of the things that told us, “We might make this work.” And then we rented this office on Lafayette Street, with $4 left in the bank.
Fast forward to today, and you’re being called one of the year’s hottest design teams. How does that feel?
Of course, it is great to be recognized, to have the work appreciated. But there is an aspect of what we do that is becoming trendy now, and I’m a bit unhappy about that. There’s a big Victoriana thing happening right now and we don’t want to get lumped in with anything that feels theme driven. We don’t believe our way of thinking about design is trendy. It’s about what we feel is important to put on the planet, and what we want to do with our lives. We’re interested in developing a lasting structure within which our ideas can evolve. So we’re happy about the press and we’re happy about the interest, but I’d like it to continue past the moment.
211 Elizabeth Street