Arts & Culture

Night School 02.17: Authenticity in Design

What does authentic design mean to you? What makes a space look, feel, or be authentic? Join a lively discussion about it over some drinks and snacks with us on February 16th at 6 p.m. at Board & Vellum's Below Grade event space, as we kick off the 2017 Night School "school year" with a discussion on authenticity.

Last year, we launched a series of bi-monthly events intended to help us and our peers in the design industry take a step back from the tasks that fill our workdays to debate, discuss, and analyze broader topics that impact what we do. We call it Night School.

We’re kicking off the 2017 “school year” on February 16 with a session on Authenticity.

As an intro to the topic, we’ll start the way all the best classes do: with a movie. In this case, we’ll be watching a short film about New York-based design firm Roman and Williams, often credited as leaders in “authentic” design. Principals Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch worked together designing sets for major Hollywood films for more than a decade before turning their talents to designing real-life spaces. But their current work (which includes the New York and New Orleans locations of The Ace Hotel, the Chicago Athletic Association hotel, and the mess hall at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters) still hovers between familiar and fantastical.

Even if you’ve never seen any of Roman and Williams’ designs, you almost certainly know the style: richly layered interiors that reference eras and locales we may have never experienced but somehow still recognize.

For better or for worse, authenticity has become a buzzword in recent years. The desire for authenticity in design has led, in some cases, to its antithesis, where the focus is on reproducing only the appearance of something rather than the craftsmanship behind it or the comfort it brings.

But how important is authenticity anyway? Even Alesch, a trained architect who reveres heritage and artistic integrity, has his reservations. “Authenticity is over-fetishized,” Alesch said in an interview in The New York Times. “Everything is a set. The first fire inside a cave was a set with buffalo furs all around it.”

In a time of current boom and influx of wealth into Seattle, when the trend is often to build quickly rather than build to last, we increasingly commodify the most important spaces in our lives: our homes. Yet we're also drawn to certain parts of cities for their history and character, restaurants for their immersive interiors, and artistic expression that is honest. But does it all matter? What is the value we currently assign authenticity?

We’ll discuss all this and more over wine and appetizers starting at 6 p.m. on Thursday, February 16 in the Below Grade event space at Board & Vellum. We hope you’ll join us.