DESIGNWIRE

New York State of Mind

Although Edward Hopper was born outside the city, in Nyack in 1882, he eventually moved to Manhattan in 1908. Five years later, and for the following five decades until his death in 1967, he lived and worked in a top-floor apartment at 3 Washington Square North, about a 20-minute walk from where the Whitney Museum of American Art stands today. Which makes it a fitting site for “Edward Hopper’s New York,” the institution’s

fall exhibition charting the artist’s enduring fascination with the city through more than 200 paintings, prints, sketches, and archival materials, as well as rarely seen watercolors of his home by his painter wife, Josephine Verstille Nivison. As for Hopper’s works, iconic ones, like Automat andEarly Sunday Morning, are joined by such lesser-known compositions as City Roofs. Additionally noteworthy is the timelessness, and timeliness, of the exhibit, Hopper’s strokes capturing, and foreseeing, the repeating cycles of demolition and construction in New York—its ability, and hope, to reinvent itself again and again.

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at ease, soldier

Governors Island,just a 5-minute ferry ride from downtown Manhattan, has been hotting up ever since the longtime military base opened to the public in 2005—offering concerts, yoga classes, immersive art installations, even glamping. Thelatest enterprise to join the fun on the car-free isle is Italy’s QC Terme, which recently opened QC NY, its first spa outside Europe. Located in one of the Victorian-era red-brick military barracks and designed by local firm Robert D. Henry Architects, with QC’s in-house team handling interiors, the waterfront day facility offers a host of amenities for stressed-out locals and visitors alike. Inside, they can enjoy an aperitivo from the bar after making use of the many saunas, scented steam rooms, water therapies, infrared beds, and free body scrubs and face masks. Outside, they can soak up direct views of the lower Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge from the lush relaxation area, its pair of heated infinity pools open year-round.

—Georgina McWhirter

Clockwise from top left: At QC NY, a day spa on Governors Island by QC Terme and Robert D. Henry Architects, wooden cutouts of the Manhattan skyline decorate the walls of an aspen-lined sauna. An outdoor relaxation area with Marco Lavit’s Hut bed by Ethimo overlooking the city’s southern tip. The heated pools with in-water loungers, backed by the former military-barrack building containing the treatment rooms. Canadian hemlock wrapping another sauna, all four manufactured by Effegibi.

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When TikTok touched down on American shores, i.e. Los Angeles, in 2019, it laid claim to the world’s most downloaded app. The same holds true this year, which is also when the company expanded to Manhattan, staking out 150,000 square feet for 1,000 employees across the five top floors of the 58-story H&M tower—fittingly steps from Broadway and its myriad dance numbers. Now, as then, the Gensler project was led by design director and senior associate Chris Mitchell, who translated some of the West Coast tropes to suit the soul of the city. The meme dream play of the neon elevator lobbies of L.A. have been re-envisioned with LED panels in colors and images representing pizza, yellow cabs, and the Statue of Liberty. In the café, LED tubes abstract the subway map, while, behind the servery counter, climbing ropes reference “Spider Man successfully scaling tall buildings,” Mitchell says, adding that, “The boardroom is a circular space in a square building,” its otherworldly oculus subtly recalling James Turrell’s work. And everywhere, including from multiple balconies, are views stretching from the Empire State Building to the Freedom Tower.—Edie Cohen

MAXI SLIDING PANELS, SELF BOLD CABINET. DESIGN GIUSEPPE BAVUSO

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