“I had a kind of idyllic midcentury childhood where I knew my neighbors and was free to roam the streets of my neighborhood,” recalls Deborah Berke, the Douglaston, Queens, New York-bred architect and dean of the Yale School of Architecture. These early expeditions often inspired Berke to draw the different houses that surrounded her, and “imagining the lives of the people who lived inside,” she says. “For me, architecture has always been about people.”
It’s natural, then, that since opening her eponymous New York practice in 1982, Berke’s work—currently she is tackling the Des Moines edition of 21c Museum Hotels and two university hospitality projects grounded in diversity and inclusivity—has been propelled by a human-centered approach to design. That ethos is also exhibited in Deborah Berke Partners’ first official product launch in early 2020. Developed in tandem with local contemporary rug studio Warp & Weft, the Light & Shadow collection embodies the firm’s commitment to making timeless, well-crafted objects. “We want people to live with and appreciate these rugs for a long time,” she points out.
The Dawn carpet, part of Berke’s Light & Shadow collection with Warp & Weft—her first foray into product design—is inspired by the way natural light moves across surfaces
Berke and four of her partners at the practice created three different series of wool rugs—Dawn, Midday, and the forthcoming Dusk—“inspired by our architecture, specifically by the way natural light moves across surfaces, reflects, and changes throughout the day,” she explains. Although all three ranges are different, with silk, for example, woven into Dawn’s design and Dusk highlighting hemp, they “share an abstract language and a soft neutral palette,” Berke adds.
Stephen Brockman, one of those partners who helped bring the Light & Shadow collection to life, notes that putting it together was a deeply collaborative process. “Our first design meeting was a true charrette,” he remembers. “Each of us came with a pile of images and words.” For Berke, it’s merely an extension of how she’s always run her business. Architecture, she says, is the result of “many minds and hands, and the same is true for this collection.”
Deborah Berke is best known for helming design for the 21c Museum Hotels brand, including the pared-down 21c Chicago
Photos courtesy of Deborah Berke Partners and Chris Cooper
This article originally appeared in HD’s 2020 Product Marketplace issue.
