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Conference room at New Yorker Magazine (courtesy Elliot Kaufmann) |
| The conference room became the public face of the magazine, the
first stop for advertisers and others on the receiving end of
the schmooze. by Ian Lebon What will the New Yorker leave behind in 1999 when it shacks up with its siblings in the new Condé Nast Building on Times Square? Warrens of offices crammed with books, a sense of independence from the vapid likes of Details and Vogue, and an elaborate new conference room. The conference room, completed last year, has become the public face of the magazine, the first stop for advertisers and others on the receiving end of a schmooze. It also serves as a gallery (for cartoons and cover art) and a site for miscellaneous breakfasts, cocktails, and harangues of the troops by the top editors. It's loaded with high-tech goodies, including ceiling mikes and a concealed camera (which, I was assured, is used quite innocently). The room was designed by Laurie Kerr, an architect, and Tom Lynch, a set designer. To evoke the New Yorker at play, they borrowed moments from popular Thurber cartoons--blown up to abstraction but recognizable to the initiated--and set them into strict grids of painted fiberboard, sandblasted glass, and stretched fabric. The result is pretty cute: a sphere in the center of the rear wall is the croquet ball from "Mama always gets mad and ruins it for everyone." Lynch, whose most recent project is Ah, Wilderness! at Lincoln Center, was happy "to do something that's up for more than three months," but Kerr, used to longer gigs, says she regrets "the short half-life" of the project. |
Keywords:
New Yorker Magazine, Laurie Kerr, Tom Lynch, conference room
