We know about them due to their intense long-term engagement with the world of contract applications and hospitality. Destinations like The Londoner in London, Park Lane in New York, La Samaritaine in Paris, Moxy in Los Angeles, and the very recent Centurion in New York (just to name the latest) are perfect representations of their design vision, dominated by essential but always elegant forms, unexpected details but also a precise overall balance. George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg have written the history of hospitality design over the last 40 years, with a constant focus on discretion and informality. Decades of experience that are taking them ever closer to the field of product design, generating a positive hybrid of the two dimensions. Products are nothing new for the New York-based duo, of course, but what is intriguing is the number of new collaborations with design companies and the range of new furnishing solutions presented this year. A wide-ranging, versatile panoply that reveals their “gentle” creative touch, with echoes from the world of hotels.
For the first time, Yabu Pushelberg have worked with De Padova: the result of this encounter between entities with a focus on refined contemporary style is the Ami seating collection. With delicate lines and enveloping forms, Ami retraces the essential features of the French club chair from the 1920s, gauging the volumes of the seat and legs in coal-stained solid ash. An ideal approach to shape a chair, an armchair and a settee.
Soft lines are also seen in the Gentle sofa created for Henge, but in this case the volumes are more forceful in their pursuit of comfort. The composite system enables creation of multiple configurations for the deep seat.
From indoor to outdoor, the duo brings its ideal of comfort into the open air, expanding the Amanu collection by Tribu with a new settee that reflects the style of the series, where the natural look of teak remains in the foreground, interpreted in the light shaping of the structure. Lightness is also the key term to define the Oiseau stool created for Linteloo, in a game of geometric lines and angles.
Chairs and seating, then, but also other products. The duo’s creative touch also extends to décor complements and experimental uses of materials. In this area we can mention the collaboration with Glas Italia, leading to production of the Ollie bookcase: a totem that combines a mirrored back with glass shelving, also with 180° curvature. The back generates a game of reflections, adding an effect of depth and continuity.
Light and transparency, in another area of research, conducted together with Marset, in the Konoha wall lamp, and with Lasvit for the Miles collection, which takes its cue from the relationship between music and the crafting of glass. In terms of form, the line makes clear reference to wind instruments, in a reminder of the company’s techniques of glassblowing.
