Trained as an architect before becoming a designer, Gaetano Pesce (1939‒2024) completed one of the most striking architectural projects of the 1990s, in answer to a commission by Jay Chiat, founder of Chiat\Day, the most fashionable advertising agency in New York and Los Angeles. Inspired by the innovative, radically free-spirited apartment the Italian maestro had designed for Ruth Shuman, Jay Chiat asked for “a virtual, fully digital office, without schedules, partitions, paper, or assigned desks.”
In 1994, before the world went digital, 180 Maiden Lane was turned into an experimental playing ground. The furniture and architecture were coated in resin––a material Gaetano Pesce specialized in––as it allowed for “joy, discovery, stimulation, in tune with the characteristics of the human body: flexibility, transparency, joy, and color.”
The whole office was designed like the streets in a village, after the lineaments of the face, and was organized around different areas, including the cafeteria, the meeting rooms, the screening room, as well as a dozen spaces reserved for the agency’s main clients. Thanks to Donatella Brun’s exceptional photoreport, as well as preparatory drawings and archival images from Gaetano Pesce’s studio, we can fully appreciate the ambition and magnitude of this crucial project in Gaetano Pesce’s career.
From doors, tables, and chairs to storage units, desks, couches, and light fixtures, Gaetano Pesce designed a comprehensive ensemble for Chiat\Day, brought together in this unprecedented illustrated catalogue.
Texts by Ivan Mietton, Donatella Brun, Elsa Cau, Damien de Amorin.
