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“Very Precious and a Little Bit Funny”: In Conversation with Adam Charlap Hyman
The up-and-coming designer speaks about his award-winning practice and shares his favorite objects from Sotheby’s latest 20th-century design auction.
I t’s only been nine years since Adam Charlap Hyman cofounded his architecture and design studio with his RISD classmate Andre Herrero. Yet in less than a decade, the 34-year-old has become one of the industry’s most sought-after designers – in 2018 he was included on Forbes’s “30 Under 30” and last November Charlap Hyman & Herrero made Architectural Digest’s prestigious AD100.
In addition to an absolutely stunning portfolio of residential projects, the duo’s clients include retailers like Aesop and Moda Operandi and art-world power players such as Salon 94, Nina Johnson, Leila Heller Gallery and Galerie Kamel Mennour, for whom they designed an exhibition of work by Camille Henrot last year. There, the French artist’s paintings inspired by sonogram imagery were hung in a gallery displaying “layers of torn wallpaper suggesting the passage of time – the impression of a domestic space in transition,” according to the firm.
Charlap Hyman’s unique approach to design was informed by his childhood raised by musicians and artists, his studies in furniture design at RISD and an early residency as a conservator at the RISD Museum, where he developed his appreciation for the history of material culture. In advance of Sotheby’s upcoming Design auction on 7–14 March, Charlap Hyman speaks with us about his process and shares his picks from the sale.
Will Fenstermaker
So, of course I’m curious about your career as a designer, but I have to ask about your first job as a conservation assistant at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. What kind of work did that entail?
Adam Charlap Hyman
It was this amazing, year-long fellowship at the museum’s conservation lab. They were getting ready to reinstall the newly renovated and curated antiquity galleries, and I put together an ancient Greek pot that was in fragments and cleaned a sarcophagus. That was all that I spent the whole year doing; it was a super precise and slow project.
Will Fenstermaker
The pace of conservation work is so fascinating – it leads to this incredibly intimate and scientific understanding of material history. Do you feel like that experience is at all relevant to your current work as a designer?
Adam Charlap Hyman
I do, yes. I’ve always liked the history of stuff more than the stuff itself, and that museum experience was the first time I got to work in an environment where people were extremely rigorous and thoughtful about history.
A material sensibility is so important in the firm’s work: understanding the way an object was made, why it was made that way and all the value systems around its creation. Some people call us “versatile” because we can work in any number of styles, but actually our approach doesn’t change between projects. It’s always about trying to learn as much as possible about the context and do something that feels uncannily familiar but weirdly new.
We’re incredibly interested in value; obviously, we have to think about that when we present furniture and art to clients, but to be able to explain why something costs what it costs and to fit it within a larger picture can be a really fun endeavor. Except, obviously, in our work we don’t get to be as fastidious and diligent as curators and conservators (laughs).
Will Fenstermaker
But that thoughtfulness and dedication does come across – it’s part of what makes the design feel so layered yet cohesive. And of course, the clients get to live in these rich tableaux and to immerse themselves in that history. How would you describe the firm’s approach to design and how it works with clients?
Adam Charlap Hyman
Our projects are all very specific and personal. When we start any project –whether it’s residential or commercial or something else – we have the client come into the office, where we present them with about 200 to 300 reference images. They’re organized in a very intuitive way, and we move quickly. It’s a Freudian exercise, a kind of free association. Each image represents multiple ways the project could go, depending on how they interpret it – they might see something as concrete as a room’s color or something much more abstract.
It’s about developing a shared language and building some reference points. Once we have that, it becomes much easier to have a conversation about something large, like the feeling of a room, or something small, like the wastebasket in the guest bathroom, because we’re inhabiting this shared world in a way.
“A material sensibility is so important in the firm’s work: understanding the way an object was made, why it was made that way and all the value systems around its creation.”
- Adam Charlap Hyman
My favorite part of any project is then trying to recombine elements in ways that seem appropriate yet feel exciting or somewhat off. I love the idea of something that feels familiar at first but is actually quite slippery and mysterious. We’re interested in bringing to the surface the relationships between things, in a space that is more complex than just objects placed together from the same period or culture.
Will Fenstermaker
This auction includes design objects from the 20th century, but within that there’s quite a lot of diversity. How did you select your favorites?
Adam Charlap Hyman
I started to conjure this kind of classic collector and their journey. Maybe this person started with major Tiffany glass and then got into Art Deco, where they discovered Jean-Michel Frank and Josef Hoffman. Then they got a little more out there with Line Vautrin. Then something radical happened when they saw a show of Philippe Hiquily’s designs in the south of France. It’s someone who’s attracted to these strange, natural forms and who has a sense of humor. When I picture this person, all of the formal relationships begin to stand out, and the objects make sense together.
For example, the Martin Brothers face jugs touch on my interest in furnishings that don’t look like they’re supposed to, that have this bizarre abstraction. That then connects to the Tiffany Studios candlestick, which looks like an alien out of the depths of your imagination. They all have this slightly insane material quality. The Flavio Poli chandelier is masterfully made, extremely beautiful and incredible detailed. Those glass bubbles and curlicue rods make it look like a sea animal.
It’s so cool to think about people who’ve gotten out of a classical traditional or a conventional set of proportions, and who are making things that are only vaguely identifiable as something that belongs in a house. It’s almost like this weird impression of a thing you know. The chandelier is such a surreal object and so deeply weird, yet there’s still this incredible craftsmanship and preciousness of material. I don’t know how you get all of those things in one object!
“We’re interested in bringing to the surface the relationships between things, in a space that is more complex than just objects placed together from the same period or culture.”
- Adam Charlap Hyman
Will Fenstermaker
Right, and that inventiveness really does come from an incredibly deep understanding of material and history.
Adam Charlap Hyman
And also a sense of humor. There’s a gravity to an object that’s both very precious and a little bit funny.
Will Fenstermaker
Would you say your designs are humorous or whimsical?
Adam Charlap Hyman
I don’t know. Sometimes people think we’re always trying to be funny. I feel like certain combinations are going to read that way, and I do love a humorous gesture or a deep-cut joke. But some spaces are supposed to be melancholy, and I really like a somber room.
We did this project in Los Angeles where the clients were so hilarious. Their whole frame of reference was about humor and laughter, so that’s obviously what we went for there. But we’re also working on this quite serious house on Long Island that Stanford White designed for his sister-in-law, who was married to a reverend. It’s shaped like an octagon and is supposed to feel a bit like a Dutch windmill. It’s a very witchy house and not at all funny.
Will Fenstermaker
You’ll be channeling your puritanical side there.
Adam Charlap Hyman
Right! (laughs)
Will Fenstermaker
Because I’m wowed by the tour you gave Architectural Digest of your own apartment in New York, I wanted to ask if there’s anything from the auction you have your eye on. Do you see something you’d consider adding to your home?
Adam Charlap Hyman
Oh, I’m obsessed with the Flavio Poli chandelier – it’s one of the most beautiful chandeliers I’ve ever seen. Chandeliers are hypothetically supposed to light up a room, but usually you don’t want that much overhead light, so it becomes about illuminating the zone of ceiling above your head and creating a little glow. They’re useful for grounding a room and creating a sense of scale, allowing the space to open up in relation to this huge object suspended there.
This is such a brilliant embodiment of that idea. It resembles the best of those 18th-century French chandeliers, which are so heavy with crystals, yet this feels minimal and almost watery. The bubbles look like they could be floating.
And I think this Martin Brothers face jug is so cool, especially if you could isolate it. I would put it alone on a mantel with nothing else over it and really allow it that sense of gravity.
Adam Charlap Hyman’s Picks
