Oliver Haselgrave with a light fixture from his debut Homework collection.
Though Brooklyn-based Home Studios has maintained a relatively low profile for much of its nine-year operation, most in-the-know New Yorkers have likely encountered its design work. The firm, led by Oliver Haslegrave, is responsible for the memorable interiors of some of the city’s favorite bars and restaurants, from Donna to Paulie Gee’s to the Spaniard. The diverse roster is indicative of Haslegrave’s keen talent for distilling specific influences, styles, and even feelings into unique environments that feel anything but overdone. In the past few years, the designer has made somewhat of a move out of the background and into his own spotlight, last year debuting Homework, a line of lighting and furniture, and exploring opportunities for future expansion. This combination of versatility and thoughtful style has paid off. Today, Haslegrave will receive the fourth annual American Design Honors award.
The bar at Elsa, in Brooklyn.
Founded by Bernhardt Design president Jerry Helling and Odile Hainaut and Claire Pijoulat, the team behind WantedDesign, the award recognizes on-the-rise design talents who embody both creativity and a knack for the entrepreneurial (past recipients have included Egg Collective and Studio Gorm). Haslegrave, whose studious design process is fueled by a seemingly insatiable curiosity and who waxes poetic about his desire to try his hand at everything from clothing to architecture, certainly fits the bill. AD PRO caught up with the designer to learn more about his process and plans for the future.
AD PRO: You have somewhat of an unusual background for a designer. Can you tell us a bit more about it and how it influences your work?
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Oliver Haslegrave: I studied film and then was a fiction editor, and actually the pieces I’ll be showing at WantedDesign [ May 19-22] this year are going to kind of combine all three disciplines: text, image, and design. So it’s both personal but also very much about the process here at Home Studios. Our process is diverse, art-based, and about visual narrative. We look a lot to books, images, text, and we think about things in a cinematic way.
Homework’s booth at 2017’s Sight Unseen fair, where the brand debuted.
AD PRO: You’re quite adept at giving your interiors a unique feeling. Is that a result of your specific process?
OH: Definitely. It’s very much part of our culture here to go to as many exhibitions and read as many books as we can, to try to learn as much as we can about all forms of creative expression. On a more micro level, that manifests in the design. Take the Spaniard, for example: It’s in the West Village, so we think, “What history can we know? Do we know anything about the building?” The owners are from Ireland, so we look at the history of pub design in Ireland. Then it’s combining all those things into one big form and editing away until you come up with what you want to keep. And when you do that, start out with that base, every project is going to be different. Since the client and the place are always different, we always have these different combinations. Its very much a kind of collage, which again ties into the pieces for Wanted.
Seaworthy, in New Orleans.
AD PRO: So how does that same process manifest when you’re working with product?
OH: What we want to be doing, what we’re working toward, is designing at three scales: the personal—what you wear and use day to day; then decor—which is what you surround yourself with; then interiors and architecture—the space you surround yourselves with. Then on top of that, there’s the timescale. An interior lasts for the longest; furniture and lighting have a shorter time span, and personal you change every day. They all overlap, which is really fun for us. If you like what we’re doing, we want to offer a solution for all three scales. So in the same way that cinema creates an environment, we want to create a personal environment for people at three scales. We started with the biggest one, and now, with Homework, we are scaling down, getting more intimate and personal. After this, maybe jewelry, maybe clothing…that’s our big picture.
AD PRO: Do you anticipate doing any collaborations to achieve that?
OH: Well, the way we see Homework is kind of as a collaboration with the process itself. Creating an interior is a collaboration with the client, so we’re bringing our process to their process. Homework is bringing our process to our process, how we do things. We use a lot of text and image in our interior process, so we incorporate text and image into the product. In that way, I think it’s a cool relationship with whoever ends up with it, because it’s not so much about what the piece is as what the thinking is behind it.
Booths at the Spaniard.
AD PRO: How has your process evolved as the firm has grown?
OH: The process is personal, and that’s how we do things, but because there’s such an emphasis on diversity in our work, we want to have a ton of viewpoints and influences, because we really look for unexpected ways for those views to combine. I still do creative direction, so I’ll lead the editing process, but we encourage as much contribution as possible because it always yields interesting results.
AD PRO: Aside from clothing and jewelry, are there any types of projects you haven’t yet touched but would like to?
OH: Well, we just started construction on our first residence, and then we’re redoing an Equinox in Tribeca, which is our first gym. We definitely want to do more residential, because there are just more things you can do that you can’t do in hospitality. We look to photography, to clothing, and it would be great to work with a clothing designer in some capacity—either a collaboration or an environment—and working with a gallery or a museum is a long-term goal.
