Dress for Success

“Live Love Die Design.” That’s the tagline for Boffo, meaning sensational.

Annie Block , Mark McMenamin — Interior Design, 11/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

“Live Love Die Design.” That’s the tagline for Boffo, meaning sensational. Faris Al-Shathir and Gregory Sparks, 29-year-olds who met at the University of Pennsylvania during graduate school for architecture and landscape architecture, respectively, launched this New York culture nonprofit to provide exposure and networking opportunities for designers and artists via exhibitions and events.

Al-Shathir and Sparks participated in this year’s Housing Works: Design on a Dime benefit by teaming up with the namesake founder of Andrew Schles Studio and artist Jessica Angel on a dining-room vignette inspired by 17th-century Flemish painters Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch and constructed with such found materials as wood from shipping pallets.

But Boffo also organizes its own happenings. Take “Building Fashion,” for which five teams of architecture and interiors firms and clothing and accessories designers were asked to work together on two-week installations under the High Line park, in the former sales office for the HL23 apartments by 2010 Interior Design Hall of Fame inductee Neil M. Denari. Among the projects on tap for Boffo next year is a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Elsie de Wolfe’s first decorator show house.