I think it’s safe to say that of all the annual events the New York Chapter of the IIDA hosts for the local A&D community, over the years the Leaders Breakfast has provided more creative inspiration and favorable memories than any other. The choice of speaker, venue and indeed the entire event is always carefully considered and very well presented. But that is not really why I like to attend; I go because this leadership-based event consistently talks about bravely challenging the unknown and the countless forms it can take in the context of design.

“In the context of time, moments matter, said Cheryl Durst, CEO of IIDA in her introductory remarks for the keynote speaker, Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture & Design as well as Director of Research & Development for MoMA. “In the context of moments,” Ms. Durst continued, “experiences matter. The context of experiences is where design lives,” she said. In this post-recession economy, the built environment is expected to multitask; to be and mean more than one thing at a time, similar to what many design professionals do throughout each day. “Our speaker this morning is on a mission to introduce and explain design in its entire context to the world,” Ms. Durst concluded.
Indeed, Ms. Antonelli focused her talk on many new frontiers the discipline of design is examining. Her curatorial perspective on the ways design impacts the daily lives of all of us came across as equal parts analyst and humanist, thinking and feeling. She was engaging to watch, and her slideshow successfully illustrated many of her points, but I could not help getting the impression that her presentation was a bit too broad, and the slides, especially, were not customized to the large number of highly creative individuals, fluent in the complexities and vicissitudes of the practice of design, who had gathered there that morning.
The sold-out event took place for the second year in a row at the delightful 583 Park Avenue, a conveniently located Upper East Side space that feels intimate, yet grand and timeless. “This year’s theme for the Leaders Breakfast,” said Co-Chair Tom Polucci, Director of Interior Design for HOK, “is all about design. We are so fortunate to live and work in a city that loves design as much as we all do.” Mr. Polucci, along with Co-Chair Suzette Rhodes from Herman Miller were excellent ambassadors for the events to follow.

When it came time to introduce the 2015 Leaders Breakfast Honorees, Mr. Polucci noted, “We decided to make it a surprise as to who would be the honoree this year. We’re doing this also as a bit of a ploy,” he said, “to make sure that you all show up every year, because you just never know, it could be you next time.” As with all live events, the unexpected was also on the agenda. “As much as we wanted to make this a surprise,” said Ms. Rhodes, “and if it is a surprise, that means nobody knows.” Unfortunately, neither textile designer Hazel Siegel nor interior designer, Randy Fahey, the two honorees this year, were in attendance at the Leaders Breakfast that morning. Instead Rebecca Dorris Steiger accepted for Ms. Siegel and Becky Button accepted for Mr. Fahey, both ladies are from the New York office of Gensler.


Herman Miller has historically given an original Eames plywood splint is a gift to each speaker and honoree at the Leaders Breakfast as a symbol of design leadership. “As there are a limited number of original splints,” said Abigail French from Herman Miller, on stage to introduce the Leaders Breakfast honorees, “The time has come to place the remaining splints in the Herman Miller design archives. Moving forward, Herman Miller would like to congratulate the speakers and honorees and award them with a special edition of an icon of modern design,” she said, referring to the highly customized Eames Walnut Stool that was on stage. “To distinguish your stool from the walnut ones,” Ms. French continued, “in collaboration with the Eames office, we have made yours in a sustainable solid ash with a translucent aniline red stain, a favorite color of both Charles and Ray Eames.”

Ms. Dorris Steiger, IIDANY Chapter president, delivered the President’s Report, in which she said, “My goal as chapter president was to provide mentorship at all levels. We see it as a holistic approach to professional development that helps strengthen the value of our chapter and what we bring to the interior design community. Our chapter’s interaction with the design schools and their deans has allowed us to get the pulse on the level of design coming out of our local schools, which will have a formative impact on our future colleagues.”

Ms. Antonelli opened with humor when it was her turn to speak. “I take a picture of every audience before I speak to them and send it to my husband,” she said. “He thought you are all so much better dressed than the people at SXSW,” which earned a big laugh from the audience.
Without really drawing the distinction between what she meant by “then” and “now,” she noted, “The fact that we went from a form of design that was about problem solving to a form of design that involves problem finding, so many of us not only solve problems for clients, but sometimes we also get hints as to something else that may be about to happen. We use our job and our work as a kind of Trojan horse into a new life.” She concluded, “In the past, it used to be about design making us alive; today it is about making us think.”
As she ran through a series of case studies concerning former MoMA design exhibits and odd facts about nature and the built environment, I kept expecting Ms. Antonelli’s examples to congeal into a single critical exposition some larger message about leadership or life in general. “People should find out design is not only cute chairs and fast cars, but it is also origami, 3D printing, and, as much as possible, design is critical,” she said. “What I want to balance with you back and forth is what you already know. Sometimes you do interiors that seem about celebrating a client or a certain atmosphere, but you know deep inside that everything you do is critical.”

To show an example of critical design she presented a project by The Spatial Information Design Lab, a group from Columbia University that created graphics depicting blocks of inner cities in the United States where the government spends more than $1 million a year to keep some of the inhabitants either in prison or in halfway houses. “This is about non-reintegration in society,” she said. “It is a form of social entropy that is also buttressed by financial waste. There are over 300 of these blocks in Brooklyn alone. I think it is outrageous, but if you just read it, you will forget it in twenty minutes. If you see it like this, red over black, it will stay with you almost like a tattoo in your mind. That is the power of design, to make the invisible visible and memorable, in some cases, it really has a critical, almost activist power.”

Afterwards, I heard a few designers discussing the talk, and one asked the other, “Was she assuming none of us have a social agenda in our current work?” Others were familiar with the ideas and designs she presented and wanted fresher examples. In all, Ms. Antonelli shared a vision of design in which she encouraged the audience to become more subjective in their design work. As most interior designers and large design firms are currently inundated with new business, it is unclear if the call for a new challenge in design will be answered by many current professionals in the field.
One part of Ms. Antonelli’s talk I appreciated was on the subject of Thinkering. “That means thinking with your hands, and understanding through making,” she said. As an open source platform, thinkering doesn’t have to be only digital. “There is so much happening right now in the physical world that is connected to the digital, along with various forms of making and 3D printing. There are some designers that are taking the opportunity to connect the old and the new, a coming together of craft and technology; sometimes radical craft,” she said.

For Ms. Antonelli, the idea of organic has also changed. “We have been trying to imitate nature for millennia in many different ways, but paradoxically, technology has led us as close as possible to it,” she said. “One of the greatest examples of this is the work of Neri Oxman from MIT Media Lab. She is attempting to study how silkworms move.” In the process, Ms. Oxman created a naturally constructed dome, called the Silk Pavilion, built entirely by silkworkms. “Neri and her team studied how silkworms move in detail using a computer and 3D scanning. She then she set the conditions for the silkworms to create this particular object,” she said. Showing the ancient paired with the new, in a similar manner to how museums share information, Ms. Antonelli noted, “Nature and computers coming together to build; this is really also about construction that is done together. That is what the future is about,” she said, “this in-betweenness that signifies where we are at now.”
Perhaps it was that some designers in the audience were not prepared to hear such a critical analysis on the state of design today, or perhaps they were exposed to too many new design ideas in a short time, but the general buzz I heard at the end was not positive. I personally thought the talk was good, but wanted her to tie all that we saw back to leadership, and inspire designers young and old alike with a message of what is expected of our profession in the future.