there is perhaps no greater honor than to be asked to update a brand you created, well, maybe apart from being asked to spit bucket duty on the beyoncé tour, but that's beside the point. the point is that the good people at YELO SPA had to move from their current location, in the shadow of the hearst building to the much more appropriate neighborhood of such luminary brands as tiffany, louis vuitton, chanel, dior and breitling. which is when we jumped in and offered not only to design the new space, on the 12th floor of the incredible art deco building at 5 east 57th street but to also revive the message and look of the brand. below are our team's effort!

combining 3 smaller apartments into one at one of new york city's most coveted uptown addresses, we delivered a stunning new dwelling on the 61st floor of the metropolitan tower. every single room is constructed so that the postcard view of central park is the star. with a built-in wraparound sofa, a secret door in the solid walnut library and distributed surround sound all over the home, this project is an ode to the 80s during which the building was erected.

suited for a family of 4 with 2 children, the communal living spaces stands in between the master suite and the kids' rooms, hidden behind the aforementioned trap door in the library, thereby providing a buffer of sight and sound.

the kitchen and dining area is the only ones wrapped in waxed concrete thereby giving it a theatrical feel, especially when see from the rest of the apartment which is clad in bleached pine and subdued colors.

after almost 6 months of planning, the countdown finally came to a halt and we made good on delivering a world's first in the form of a new car model being dramatically unveiled at one of the world's premier shows. without a car. the pitch at the infiniti's nashville headquarters a few months again went a little something like this: "what if we welcomed people inside an empty tent!..." i said to a room full of executives. "what if we didn't and say we did? and actually what if you got out of this building and never came back?!" i was prepared to hear. but no, they listened, attentively, at the seemingly crazy plan we at theapt had devised while trying to outdo ourselves from last year's house of inspiration.
agencies like mine usually waltz into conference rooms like theirs arguing that positioning is the single most important part of marketing but we omit to make clear that saying such things positions us as "holders of a truth" for our clients. truth is a dangerous concept for a creative agency to lay claim to as it is one that, to paraphrase a great man, cannot possibly be written in ink, only found in nature. which got us thinking... truth only reveals itself when one gives up all preconceived ideas such as the ideal of a supposed infallible process to sell more cars. that is what we wanted to propose.

envisioned as a powerful and stirring experience, the infiniti journey of inspiration is emotionally involved within the world of the car company. welcomed into the tent, we are shown, not told about, the muses and motivations that have, over the past 20 years, guided the designers and engineers behind every single vehicle. we encounter face-to-face, not are simply presented with, the creativity and inventiveness with which problems are solved and opportunities taken. we, finally, are surprised and delighted by the revelation that infiniti has apparently given away the sources of its own inspiration. by way of a technology called mapping projection, invented and patented by our good friends at klip collective the guests will be surrounded 360° by visual and aural expressions of the brand in a way that has never before been achieved. the goal is absolute involvement. the goal is to tell the story of a myriad journeys taken in the cars. the goal is to invite and inspire.

and that is what we did.

a love story set in paris during the second world war, marguerite draws inspiration from one of the greatest of romantic novels, la dame aux camélias by alexandre dumas.

marguerite is the beautiful and notorious mistress of a high ranking german officer. armand is a young musician half her age who falls obsessively in love with her. their dangerous love story is played out against the background of occupied paris.

marguerite will be the world premiere of a collaboration between the creators of les misérables and miss saigon and the oscar award-winning musical legend michel legrand. we had the great privilege of being asked to design the branding and marketing materials for the season run in london's west end.

various pieces for various clients

hands-down one of our absolute favorite projects! the client was cindy gallop, international woman of mystery inspiration, who didn't exactly have much time, as the chairwoman of advertising giant BBH, to lay out her new apartment in the converted locker rooms of the first ymca in the u.s. but she did have time to inspire us... her brief was simple: "at night, i want to feel like i'm in a shanghai nightclub..." and so our proposal was equally simple: "what if you lived inside a lacquered chinese box?..." to our amazement, she was game so we knew our next idea would pass as well, no demising walls whatsoever, just a network of two-track curtains which could be used to make rooms on-the-fly. of course, there was the matter of the 300 pairs of heels that ms. gallop cherishes as art and so they were treated as such, displayed in the own light box, all along the width of the apartment. this project was conceptual in nature at first but yielded results beyond our wildest dreams in terms of comfort of living and luxury.

brand a real estate company

on a cold december night in late 18th century amsterdam...

those were the first words read by the first potential buyers of a new condominium project in hoboken, new jersey. why? because on this project for remi companies, a growing developer in the garden state, we had inherited a building that had to adhere to community architectural standards, which meant that this large, 128-unit behemoth looked like an anachronistic aberration for a new construction. the name had also been chosen by the developer. so instead of fighting our hand, we took advantage of it. we invented a mythology that revolved around a fictional idealist dutch architect named joost van der rohr who, on a cold december, feverishly took to his drafting table and, in a fit of inspiration, drew the plans for a utopian society he would come to call velocitus. centuries later, his american descendants razed his house in amsterdam and found those plans buried underground. ecstatic, they decided to build their great-great-great grandfather's dreams, where else but in new jersey. and they would search far and wide for more of joost's heirs to inhabit it.a poster was then sent to prospective buyers asking them if they were part of the family followed by a telegram two weeks later making them aware that they were and inviting them to the groundbreaking of the project. what happened is that people did not feel pressured to buy real estate, they did not feel like they were in the usual square footage race, they simply belonged. and by the time the offer was made clear, they were already hooked. they could also continue the experience online and in a motion graphic piece on the site.

this project is a study of a client taking a risk with an unconventional approach, and it paying off!

to brand cindy gallop's everyday and not-so everyday needs

during the night of icff 2008, we introduced a line of six different, well, stools. our point is this: everyday, we get told to reuse this, to save that, not to waste, not to stand idle while the planet dies... and all this while we have at our disposal one of the best, if not the most sophisticated recycling machine ever invented: the human body. and so, we asked why aren't we using what we have at the ready to resolve this crisis. and we did. the answer was inside of us all the time my friends and that is why we are proud to present the first furniture collection made out of human (un)waste.as you can see above, our designers have worked overtime to bring the future. each theaptPEEP, because of his or her diet, has created a unique piece that is a demonstration of how far the human spirit can go if pushed to the limit.

"let's start a movement!" that was the battlecry at the party which is why we invited the hundreds of heros who were lucky enough to attend on saturday night to show that they gave a shit by taking a shit... at theaptPOOPSHOOT (http://theaptpoopshoot.tumblr.com/) see how we can all come together and make a difference.

the newest member of theaptFAMILY is here

meet at the apartment at 101 crosby street in new york city, the site of our former retail design store and subsequent agency, is the inaugural location in a collection of state-of-the-art creative meeting spaces launching around the world over the next five years (london and Dubai are currently in the planning stages). meet is a collaboration between us and new york based marketing agency, electric artists who is an equity partner in meet along with sara and marc schiller, founders of the wooster collective. quite a team, uh?

we've been working on this for a while and the basic concept is that people, everyday, need inspiration. in our 10 year-old experience, nobody moreso than companies whose wheels are often so slow to turn that they lose sight of the goals, creative and otherwise, that set them on their mission to begin with. and that's why we're here, to provide a newly-designed space as a new riff on the idea of the blank canvas to wake up the corporations in question and a community to get them inspired again.

these are samples of work, all together now.