the Designer Pages blog

Last night, a few of the Designer Pages staff were fortunate to score some comp tickets to the first of three lectures sponsored by the IIDA at the Times Center. Last night’s epic performance “Redefining Cruise Ship Luxury”, moderated by the bright red sock-sporting human encyclopedia Bill Miller, was a (coffee) round table of sorts discussing the history of and design challenges facing cruise ship designers. First to speak was Bill, followed by Kelly Gonzalez of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Francesca Bucci and Hans Galutera of BG Studio International and design heavyweight Adam Tihany of the eponymous Tihany Design (incidentally one our advisory board members as well).

The most interesting thing I learned? Along with everything else, all cruise ship lighting must not move at all. Chandelier crystals are often fixed to rods in order to keep individual elements from rattling when the ship encounters turbulence at sea. How cool is that?

More importantly, who were the most interesting people we met? Quick shoutouts go to our old friends Jeannine Durfee and Thierry Herbert, showroom managers at D’Apostrophe, a Chinatown purveyor of Belgian manufacturers Royal Botania, MGX and Bulo. Empowered by a little white wine post-lecture, we also made friends with Jamie Mikkelson at Gunlocke and Nicole Freilich at Allsteel.

And the most exciting part of all? Everyone was already familiar with Designer Pages and the Designer Pages family. Needless to say, that was enough to send us cruisin’ into this weekend with smiles on our faces