Dark Nostalgia

As the late twentieth-century fascination with rounded shapes, organic influences, and plastics fades, interior designers are increasingly drawn to deep colours, polished woods, velvets, furs, leather, dark metals, and brick – materials used liberally in the past – that have a nostalgic quality.Efforts to shape a less austere present by creating an idealized version of the past have begun to appear in commercial and residential design throughout the country and abroad.Dark Nostalgia presents over twenty-five projects that exemplify the smooth incorporation of evocative historic detail into current interiors.Public spaces, including New York’s famous Royalton Hotel lobby renovation, Shoreditch House in London, and Alain Ducasse’s newest restaurant, Adour, as well as private residences and smaller, intimate restaurants and clubs by cutting-edge designers, including AvroKO, David Rockwell, Roman & Williams, Julian Schnabel, Philippe Starck and Adam Tihany, demonstrate the many successful ways this trend towards a dark nostalgia has been incorporated in recent designs.