This new furniture showroom is our dream New York loft

How do you put a bit of New York into a California furniture brand? And, conversely, how do you bring a dose of California cool to the Big Apple?

That was a question that furniture designers Glenn Lawson and Grant Fenning of the Los Angeles-based company Lawson-Fenning pondered when they were in search of a space to house their new Manhattan showroom.

The duo met as students at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California in the 1990s and founded their eponymous furniture company in 1997. Their mission was simple: to deliver a form-follows-function ethos while prioritising craftsmanship, beauty, and area makers. Today, in addition to their own original designs, Lawson-Fenning sells lighting, ceramics and vintage both online and from a brick-and-mortar shop on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. But as their customer base grew, it was clear they needed to set their sights eastward.

‘We think that furniture really needs to be experienced in person,’ says Lawson. ‘We took our time to find a space where we could just show a lot of products and show a point of view – something that made sense for a California brand.’

Lawson and Fenning found the ideal venue in a 1910 cast-iron building on Lafayette Street in Manhattan’s Noho neighborhood which, in addition to having Californian neighbors (Nickey Kehoe’s store is just a few blocks away), had their friend, the French-American designer Danny Kaplan, as a tenant. All they needed to do was choose a designer.

‘For us it feels like a new chapter in a story,’ says Lawson. ‘We’re definitely a California brand, but what does it look like in New York? How does that feel?

To answer those questions, Lawson and Fenning tapped fellow Californian and long-time friend Josh Greene to oversee the interior design. ‘We've kind of grown up together,’ says Lawson. ‘It was a nice story of us coming together with somebody who knows us so well.’

The biggest challenge in designing the loft-like space, per Greene, was to create residential-scaled spaces so that clients—both trade and consumer—could envision the furnishings in their homes without it feeling ‘like this overwhelming sea of furniture,’ Greene says.

‘I had never done a traditional loft before, so it was a really fun challenge,’ he adds. ‘I wanted the design to be super clean and organised, to let all of the furniture do what it's supposed to.’

Via a combination of partitions and handsome walnut millwork, Greene brought the vastness of the 4,500 square foot space down to something more intimate. ‘We had to make sure every room really works as a standalone room,’ says Lawson.

The boldest design choices for the new showroom involved color. ‘The palette in Los Angeles is more neutral. We made it more complex in New York,’ Fenning explains. Hues like orange, blush, ochre and green (inspired by the lush view outside Lawson’s window in Los Feliz) provide a distinctly California backdrop to the brand’s easy-going furnishings and accessories. ‘I just kind of works together,’ Greene says.

Lawson-Fenning’s co-founders are eager to use their fresh New York digs to host new collections, exhibitions and highlight the maker community they’ve cultivated all of these years. Greene, for his part, has a new collection with the brand.

‘We hadn’t really worked with an outside designer before—we created a bit of a new language with Josh,’ says Fenning of the showroom. ‘We definitely love how it came out.’

So, apparently, do the customers, according to Lawson.

‘The feedback we get over and over again is, “Can I move in?”’