High above a cobblestone block in lower Manhattan looms a Herzog & de Meuron residential building with a twisting cast-aluminium gate and a façade of mirror-polished stainless steel, glass and pre-patinated copper in brilliant green. The grandeur (and shine) of this material palette gives the 11-storey complex the feel of an urban fairy-tale palace.
That would make Gabriel Hendifar, artistic director and CEO of the New York-based lighting and furniture design studio Apparatus, a rather buff, burly (and bald!) Rapunzel, peering down from a floor-to-ceiling window in his apartment.
Hendifar, who has claimed an elevated perch not only in this building but, increasingly, on the international design scene – his brand’s ‘Cloud’ pendant light has surely achieved contemporary classic status – moved into this new home in 2019 with his former partner in life and work, Jeremy Anderson. After the couple split at the end of 2020, Anderson left both their shared apartment and Apparatus to focus on his burgeoning ceramic practice. Since then, Hendifar has fully taken the reins at the company. He also added the finishing touches to the look of his home, turning it into both a design laboratory and a place to unwind.
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In the decade since co-founding Apparatus in 2012, originally focusing on lighting before expanding into furniture, Hendifar has spent quite a lot of time innovating and building his brand – and his home has played an important role. ‘What I’ve allowed myself to do in this apartment is to let my brain go where it wants to go, to guard my time alone and indulge in whatever feels inspiring.’
Designed by the minimalist architect John Pawson, the property is arranged in a tripartite configuration, separated by two partial dividers. To soften its wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, Hendifar has matched velvet curtains to the pistachio hue of the walls, creating continuity. At one end of the apartment is a dining area, where a banquette upholstered in faux-bois velvet – dead stock discovered at Mood Fabrics in New York’s Garment District – is paired with a burl-and-brass oval table and Hendifar-designed chairs. There is a small kitchen, too, but Hendifar prefers takeaways to cooking.
At the opposite end is the main bedroom: a seductive den with a mirrored wall facing the bed. These two spaces bookend the heart of the home – a living room defined by a curved sofa and leopard-print rug. Hendifar is fond of creating a fully immersive sensory experience; at any given moment there are scents wafting, jazz playing and candles casting shadows.
Equally important are those finishing touches. These include an antique incense burner used as an ashtray, an inlay-and-marble bowl inspired by a delicate khātam marquetry box inherited from his Persian grandmother. Every object, Hendifar explains, is part of the narrative he is consciously creating. ‘The micro moments,’ as he calls them, ‘help to tell the story’.
Hendifar’s comprehensive approach to design is all-consuming and his personal history is the font from which this creativity flows. His parents, who fled Iran in 1979 and settled in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, were both musical. When he was a child, he loved to watch his father perform on the Persian drums while his mother sang and played piano. He has inherited that sense of showmanship. ‘My currency is my ability to perform and create,’ he says.
It’s fitting, then, that his first foray into design was as a teenager, when he concocted the most expensive theatre set in the history of his high school in LA’s Pacific Palisades. His production of Guys and Dolls was so visually striking, it won him his first interior-design client – a classmate’s mother. He was 17.
Now 40, he is just as theatrical. Each Apparatus collection pulls references from literature and drama. In 2018, for instance, the ‘Act III’ range (the ‘Median’ and ‘Talisman’ lights, which feature in the brand’s newly redesigned studio) was introduced with a short film, directed by filmmaker and photographer Matthew Placek, in which a boy lives high above a desert landscape. Hendifar’s mother sings a Persian song in the background. The designer explains that these details, ‘provide the mood. They are the mechanics of creating emotion.’
Hendifar’s aesthetic is thoughtful and sumptuous, as influenced by the simple luxury of Pierre Cardin and Halston as it is by the modernist utilitarianism of the Wiener Werkstätte. In many ways, the design of his apartment and studio represents a rediscovery of himself that embraces every version of who he was, who he is, and who he hopes to become. And so it is, too, with the objects he creates for others. ‘Through Apparatus, I’m expressing a need for human connection,’ he tells us.‘The creative act is one of hope, ultimately.’ apparatusstudio.com
