Shadow Players

What do you recall when some­one says bohemi­an glass?
Glenn Pushel­berg: The first time I vis­it­ed Prague was 30 years ago. I remem­ber to this day the thing I was most fas­ci­nat­ed by was the tra­di­tion­al hand cut glass­ware. George and I remained fas­ci­nat­ed by the country’s abil­i­ty to cut glass. It was a time­less, tra­di­tion­al craft we nev­er thought we‘d use, but we were fas­ci­nat­ed by it. Now we’ve come full circle.

Orig­i­nal­ly we were talk­ing about design­ing a col­lec­tion of glass­ware acces­sories for Lasvit – at the end we‘ve cre­at­ed not only a glass­ware col­lec­tion, but main­ly a more exten­sive col­lec­tion. You‘re pret­ty good at convincing!
George Yabu: I remem­ber the Cipher col­lec­tion actu­al­ly start­ed with our dis­like for tra­di­tion­al chan­de­liers (laugh­ing). The faceted glass has always been too gem­like for our lik­ing. Refrac­tion of light was some­thing we thought about, and we want­ed to get it pierc­ing­ly straight, refined as such a tight line. We were fas­ci­nat­ed by that and the tech­nol­o­gy of laser light because of how sharp and pre­cise those lines are. In explor­ing Otto, our inau­gur­al col­lec­tion with Lasvit, we want­ed to mar­ry this notion of refrac­tion pre­ci­sion with the her­itage of crys­tal craftsmanship.

How long have you been design­ing them both?
George: The desire was always there to cre­ate some­thing with pre­cise, clean lines. It was the unique and excep­tion­al crafts­man­ship behind the com­pa­ny that allowed us to trans­form our dream into reality.

The sur­faces for the Cipher col­lec­tion were inspired by explo­ration of light. Can you describe exact­ly what you want­ed to catch by the decor?
George: We had ini­tial­ly con­ceived of five dif­fer­ent con­cepts for our first light­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion. There were plays between unstruc­tured blown glass, sus­pend­ed molten glass orbs, del­i­cate met­al frame­works, stack­ing, tex­tured glass… with Lasvit’s exper­tise on our side, we knew that, togeth­er, we could cre­ate some­thing tru­ly new. So we explored a range of pos­si­bil­i­ties. The Cipher that we know today didn’t take shape until we were in Prague review­ing pro­to­types. We had an aha moment. Dur­ing that vis­it, the pro­to­types were excep­tion­al to behold, but weren’t quite meet­ing the vision and essence we aimed to cap­ture when design­ing the col­lec­tion in our stu­dio. The aha moment occurred when I took an Otto glass and placed it over a light gen­er­a­tor. The res­o­nance was imme­di­ate — it was exact­ly what we were hop­ing to achieve. Sharp lines shot out, cast­ing pre­cise lines and shad­ows on the wall. It was a hap­py accident.

Your orig­i­nal spe­cial­ty is inte­ri­or design. Did this back­ground help you design such a mul­ti­pur­pose light­ing col­lec­tion? It‘s often said, that design­ers cre­ate things that solve their own problems.
George: The change felt more like a nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion rather than a stark new era. For years, we’d been work­ing with our inte­ri­or design­ers to bring new objects to life, how­ev­er they were miss­ing the key com­po­nent of indus­tri­al design rig­or. We had our feet in the water and then nat­u­ral­ly began build­ing out a team of indus­tri­al design­ers to dri­ve the process and ensure each new prod­uct was the best it could be.

Glenn: The great­est dif­fer­ence between design­ing a project ver­sus design­ing a prod­uct is actu­al­ly one of the most sat­is­fy­ing. When design­ing a hotel, we’re often look­ing at an eight-year time­line. It’s a slow burn. When design­ing prod­ucts, we ideate, we design, we pro­to­type, and that object is brought to life in a year or two. That rel­a­tive­ly imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion is deeply sat­is­fy­ing and keeps things exciting.

What kind of atmos­phere you want­ed to reach?
George: Orig­i­nal­ly, we saw Cipher as a plug-and-play sys­tem; a matrix of dif­fer­ent com­po­nents fit­ting into vary­ing envi­ron­ments. We have spaces, espe­cial­ly in hotels, that are high vol­ume and where we may need to drop some­thing down a stair, or intro­duce light to a tight space or a spe­cial­ized space. In time, we real­ized we could build the sys­tem not only lat­er­al­ly, but could also intro­duce floor lamps and table lamps to cre­ate much more range. From there, we’ve con­tin­ued to find new shapes and forms. We’ve cre­at­ed every­thing from a Cipher Christ­mas tree to grand Cipher chan­de­liers, small wall sconces to art instal­la­tions. The abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue grow­ing the col­lec­tion keeps us excit­ed and engaged.

From your enthu­si­ams I assume you‘re per­son­al­ly using Cipher in your projects, right?
Glenn: We are, and it sat­is­fies an amaz­ing range of needs while main­tain­ing a sense of new­ness and nov­el­ty. We opened The Lon­don­er Hotel this fall in Leices­ter Square and Cipher was used through­out – seam­less­ly float­ing above a pre-func­tion bar in a sin­gle, hor­i­zon­tal for­ma­tion, trans­formed into an art instal­la­tion above one of the hotel’s pub­lic entrances, and most spec­tac­u­lar­ly, span­ning three sto­ries of the hotel’s unique under­ground pro­gram­ing, punc­tu­at­ed with star­bursts each step of these way. The col­lec­tion feels nat­ur­al in each of the spaces while still main­tain­ing a unique iden­ti­ty for each pur­pose. Cipher feels as nat­ur­al in The Lon­don­er as it does sit­ting here on my desk in our New York apartment.

George: Anoth­er recent instal­la­tion of Cipher may be found at the Park Lane Hotel in New York. It’s been installed as both lin­ear sconces and as a dynam­ic chan­de­lier-as-art above one the lobby’s spi­ral stair­cas­es. We’d not yet played with flat-planed geo­met­ric for­ma­tions, but we were able to bring them to life in our own back­yard here in New York City. The con­trast between these projects – The Lon­don­er and the Park Lane Hotel – is demon­stra­tive of how dynam­ic Cipher is. The Lon­don­er was a new build, very mod­ern, where­as the Park Lane is actu­al­ly a ren­o­va­tion, with her­itage ele­ments pre­served. The col­lec­tion worked seam­less­ly across both properties.

Speak­ing of wide range… How many com­bi­na­tions can you actu­al­ly cre­ate with the collection?
George: Glenn and I went into design so we could avoid doing any­thing involv­ing num­bers, so [laugh­ing] I’ll have to leave the arith­metic to you. I can say with con­fi­dence that the options feel lim­it­less. Cipher trans­forms to fit mod­ern spaces and tra­di­tion­al spaces alike, while its scale ranges from sweet table lamps to mul­ti-sto­ry chan­de­liers. The col­lec­tion both trans­forms and is transformative.

What is impor­tant when choos­ing a light for a home or a hotel?
Glenn: It’s the qual­i­ty of light that cre­ates mood. It isn’t sim­ply about bright light or dim light, but rather where you put the light. Com­ing from the floor, a small lamp spreads light to cre­ate mood and illu­mi­nate the ceil­ing. Recessed light trans­forms atmos­phere. Then comes the col­or and inten­si­ty of the light. Bright light is ener­giz­ing, dim light can be sooth­ing and sen­su­al. These ele­ments form qual­i­ty, and with them we’re able to cre­ate highs and lows, mov­ing one’s eye to where the light is, guid­ing you through a space or high­light­ing a par­tic­u­lar area.

Your hos­pi­tal­i­ty projects work fre­quent­ly with the top­ic of lux­u­ry. What does lux­u­ry mean for you personally?
Glenn: New lux­u­ry is qual­i­ta­tive, not quan­ti­ta­tive. Those who are knowl­edge­able, those who are for­ward think­ing or who trav­el are ear­ly adopters. Typ­i­cal­ly, those peo­ple are also look­ing for qual­i­ta­tive lux­u­ry. It’s not about gild­ing the lily, but rather cre­at­ing things spa­tial­ly that evoke emo­tion. Things that you can con­nect to. Things you under­stand and that are thought­ful. They can be com­prised of the sim­plest mate­r­i­al and be the most beau­ti­ful. Jux­ta­posed against the most expen­sive mate­r­i­al, it doesn’t need to be equal­ly expen­sive. It’s about pro­por­tions and the way some­thing occu­pies space in a room. That’s a lux­u­ry. Otto and Cipher work with very gen­tle, sim­ple and refined details. I have a feel­ing, that this decor cre­ates a very under­stand­able lan­guage that feels famil­iar and com­fort­able, yet in a very dis­tinc­tive, approach­able and sophis­ti­cat­ed way. Seems almost like jewellery.

Since you‘re also a cou­ple, how do you com­plete each other?
George: It goes back to trust. We’ve been part­ners in work for more than 40 years, and in life for near­ly just as long. We’ve shared expe­ri­ences and grown along­side one anoth­er and togeth­er. Feed­back is a nat­ur­al and essen­tial part of our work, and because we have com­plete trust in one anoth­er, we already know how to review. We will con­tin­ue to have dif­fer­ing opin­ions from time to time, but the dif­fer­ences are nev­er tak­en personally.

What is the key fac­tor in your work?
George: Curios­i­ty. And try­ing to find the answer to some­thing. We’re chas­ing the emo­tion­al res­o­nance you get from a project that works.

Glenn: There is a sense of emo­tion and pow­er that define our best inte­ri­ors and most sat­is­fy­ing work. There is a com­plete­ness when every­thing is work­ing in har­mo­ny. We hope that what we cre­ate res­onates and won’t be soon for­got­ten. It’s not about a bam. We don’t want to be too ephemer­al. We want to be lasting.

Do you have a sys­tem for divid­ing types of work in the studio?
George Yabu: We’re both very hands on and like to remain close to the design process. There isn’t a for­mal sys­tem by any means, and we will reverse roles as need­ed, but I’d say it’s nat­ur­al for Glenn to take on more of the client-fac­ing tasks through­out the life­cy­cle of a project. His abil­i­ty to devel­op rela­tion­ships and keep things on track, push­ing when need­ed or keep­ing firm on some­thing we’re pas­sion­ate about is a skill he can be com­plete­ly entrust­ed with.

Glenn: As George men­tioned, we both do a lit­tle bit of every­thing. While I’m fly­ing some­where to meet a client on the oth­er side of the world, George is the one sit­ting right along­side our design teams sketch­ing out the details, refin­ing and ele­vat­ing. His atten­tion to detail makes our work what it is. The cur­va­ture to the back of a chair, the angle where two seams meet, or the shade of a tex­tile… He’s attuned to all of these ele­ments and has a beau­ti­ful vision that makes them feel alive.

What is the most beau­ti­ful thing or place, that you ever saw or visited?
George: The Kat­sura Impe­r­i­al Vil­la in Kyoto. What cap­ti­vates us is that for a roy­al res­i­dence, it’s extreme­ly hum­ble. That’s what I love about it. The gar­dens are extra­or­di­nary all year round. Rock, stone, water, nature… parts of the gar­dens are untouched and parts are deeply con­sid­ered and cul­ti­vat­ed. There are mean­der­ing moments between dozens of small­er build­ings, filled with vary­ing sight­lines divid­ed by wan­der­ing path­ways and slid­ing screens.

Glenn Pushel­berg: Walk­ing a sim­ple stone path, the fram­ing of the views is amaz­ing. There’s a syn­onymy with the way Hauss­mann recon­ceived of Paris in that no mat­ter where you turn, there’s an excep­tion­al sight­line ahead of you.

Yabu Pushel­berg is an inter­na­tion­al design firm with stu­dios in Toron­to and New York, found­ed in 1980 by Glenn Pushel­berg and George Yabu. Their spe­cial­iza­tion lies in inte­ri­or hos­pi­tal­i­ty and res­i­den­tial projects and prod­uct design. Yabu Pushel­berg stu­dio is part of the Lasvit fam­i­ly since 2017.