LOOKBOOKS, Jun 9, 2012

Design: Weekend at BOFFO’s By Frank Exposito

A playroom turns into a dollhouse. Lasers shoot through dark bedrooms as an office explodes upward like a geometric tree. No, these aren’t the working concepts for a futurist Alice in Wonderland (though surely even Tim Burton would find these walls appealing). Things are slightly askew for the better at the first ever BOFFO Show House, where contemporary boundaries of living are tested and redesigned in four themes staged in four bi-level apartments. The Show House combines innovative furniture, art, lighting, floral arrangements, and even fragrance to create unique interiors across the hall from each other like a dorm floor magnified by proportion and personality.

Work, Play (smelling of sweet, unwrapped candy), Nature and Future, though each behind their own door at The Madison Jackson on the Lower East Side, seem to coalesce together in an aesthetic of invention. Sometimes alien with its unfamiliar shadows, yet at others distinctly recognizable in Surrealist-like manifestos, these rooms are anything but usual. Arranged by the eccentric interior designer, Andrew Yes–with a name that already invites opportunity–notable designs by Focus Lighting, USM Modular Furniture, Tom Fruin, ROLU, Snohetta, Eduardo Garza, Max Lamb,Christopher Kurtz and Alex Gil are given free reign to occupy the wildest decorative sensibilities. A dry underwater tank, gravity-less trees, a sofa made of rubber, and rubbish as twenty-foot wallpaper make up only a few of the axial moments not to be missed.

For some summer design inspiration, stop by BOFFO over the weekend when they’ll be serving champagne in celebration of its month long run before closing on June 4th. Dive right into a design wonderland, though be wary of any glasses labeled, “Drink Me.” But, who knows? It might make you rethink the height of that dining room table.

BOFFO Show House with Andrew Yes