Since Enrico Bonetti and Dominic Kozerski founded their practice in New York more than a quarter of a century ago, they have made their sophisticated mark in the world of design. Among Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture’s many prestigious commissions are Pace Gallery’s New York HQ, boutiques for Tod’s, Edition hotels around the world, and private residences for music producer Rick Rubin, fashion designer Donna Karan and hotelier André Balazs. The irony is that the firm never had an office that was as intentional and custom-made as the spaces it created for its clients.
Architects Enrico Bonetti and Dominic Kozerski in one of the conference rooms of their new HQ in New York’s Chinatown
Tour the new office of Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture
For 23 years, Bonetti and Kozerski worked from the same 1920s building in SoHo, steadily annexing square footage as their practice grew. Meanwhile, the neighbourhood’s creative energy, which initially drew the firm there, had become ‘diluted’, as Bonetti describes. Just as their lease came up for renewal a couple of years ago, they learned of a vacant space in Chinatown and saw an opportunity to develop the type of studio they always wanted in an area of the city that is becoming a new destination for artists and creatives. ‘We saw this space as a 2.0 in terms of working together,’ Kozerski says. ‘It’s an experiment, and we’re still waiting to see what it’s going to mean.’
The entrance lobby features furniture from Vitra and walls clad in cement-bonded particle boards from Portugal
Located in a midcentury commercial building on the Bowery, Bonetti/Kozerski’s new 510 sq m workspace channels the spirit that originally drew the duo, who met while working in Peter Marino’s office in the 1990s. It’s a seductive, loft-like space that marries the firm’s love of evocative natural materials, using industrial elements decoratively, and antique and modernist design. But functionality came first and foremost and, for Bonetti and Kozerski, that meant prioritising collaboration – a necessity since the firm designs everything from academic spaces to superyacht interiors and luxury retail, and part of its success is bridging reference points from discipline to discipline in order to keep projects fresh. ‘We try not to specialise,’ Bonetti says. ‘A generalist is more important than a specialist. People do the same thing. It’s good business – just do the same thing forever – but it’s not necessarily the best for the client.’
Two 12m-long bookcases flank the office’s main open space. The industrial metal shelving from Penco holds the architects’ collection of books and objects, including 1970s Danish Ortofon speakers, a 1960s flip clock, a pair of German ceramic toilet paper holders used as bookends, and a custom-made table lamp
To encourage more cross-pollination, the firm designed multiple pathways and routes through their new office. ‘We’ve always felt that architecture is a very collaborative discipline and it’s important that people are aware of other things going on in the office,’ Kozerski says. Two long work tables in the heart of the office are surrounded by smaller pavilions containing conference rooms, material libraries and a kitchen. Bonetti and Kozerski have desks in the far corners for privacy, while still being a part of the mix.
The entrance and adjoining conference room are furnished with custom-made pieces, including a teak console, Grigio Imperiale marble side table, and an oak bench designed for Warsaw’s Craftica Gallery. On the console is an Ebolicht reading lamp,while the framed artworks include, from left, a pair of paintings by Davide Cantoni, a 1970 map of New York, an early 20th-century Chinese floor plan for a temple, and a photograph of the practice’s New York apartment for Donna Karan
Stylistically, the architects maintained a restrained, monochromatic sensibility across the office. They painted the 4m-tall, exposed-beam ceiling matte black, choosing textured grey cement panels for the walls, and opting for a white floor. This allowed them to heighten the space’s volumetric qualities. The effect is theatrical, and it frames what is perhaps the most defining element of the office: a 23m-long expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge.
The conference room, lit by a Ketra circadian lighting system from Lutron, features ergonomic ‘HÅG Capisco’ chairs by Peter Opsvik. To the left is a prototype for the ‘Plateau’ chair, designed by Bonetti/Kozerski for Sutherland Furniture
It’s a rare vantage point. Since the office is on the second storey, it is both close to the energetic flow of pedestrians, cars and cyclists just outside, yet feels like a refuge from it. From spring to autumn, the light that bounces off the span’s neoclassical stone portal, designed by the same architects as the main branch of the New York Public Library, floods the office with a golden glow, while the changing foliage of street trees within view brings in seasonality. ‘We feel the effect of the day,’ Bonetti says.
Kozerski’s desk, with a pair of vintage Herman Miller ‘Eames PACC’ swivel chairs, alongside two ‘AX’ chairs (designed by Peter Hvidt and Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen in the 1950s and used by Bonetti/Kozerski to show clients how wooden seating can be very comfortable), a ‘209’ chair by Thonet, and a ‘Uno Sull’altro’ teak bookcase by Ugo La Pietra
The architects relied on furniture and lighting, rather than walls, to define the space. A Lutron system enables them to choose the colour temperature for each bulb, and for the lights to adjust to circadian rhythms. In the conference rooms, they landed on a combination to make sure that everyone looks good on Zoom: warm light shining on a person’s face and cooler light on the textured wall behind them. ‘It looks like a passport photograph from 20 years ago with this sort of mottled grey background,’ Kozerski says.
Most of the furniture and objects are custom-made (or customised). An artisan in Italy made the work tables from walnut with a surface of Fenix, a durable, ultra-matte material with self-healing properties, which is helpful when stone samples inevitably scratch the surface. Industrial metal shelves from Penco hold the reference books, artefacts and found objects that architects tend to collect (in the case of Bonetti and Kozerski, these include 1930s Italian moulds, vintage hi-fi speakers from Denmark, and retro flip clocks, which allude to the firm’s love of mechanisms), as well as keepsakes from past projects, including a pool tile used for the façade of a building in Washington DC. Bonetti and Kozerski then pulled a few experiments out of storage to furnish the space. One coffee table, composed of oak trunks stained black, was originally designed for the Public Hotel in New York but rejected, while another table whose dimensions were too large for a client now serve as functional sculpture.
‘We always love when we get a challenge to do something that we haven’t done before, and we kind of go deep and spend way too much time on it, which is not good economics, but good fun for us,’ says Kozerski. ‘We learn a lot, learn from mistakes, and try a lot of stuff. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t.’
These Easter eggs from the firm’s past also serve as useful reference points: a Japanese washi paper lamp that informed an eventual design for Donna Karan’s Hamptons house stands in a seating area near Bonetti’s desk; the firm is now adapting it for the guest rooms of a hotel in Ibiza after their client fell in love with the original. To help clients and staff visualise dimensions, Bonetti/Kozerski labelled walls with measurements – a detail borrowed from Avenues, a private school in Manhattan, which the firm designed.
Since moving into their new space, Bonetti and Kozerski have found an unexpected use for their office: as a place to entertain. Their kitchen, sourced from industrial supply stores on the Bowery, is large enough for a chef, and so they have hosted dinner parties with friends, colleagues and artists. This wasn’t part of the original plan, but ‘once we realised how much we liked the office, we thought we should take advantage,’ Bonetti says. ‘Now we have the chance to invite people over, not for a meeting but for a conversation.’ In the future, a creative exchange at one of those events might ignite their next great collaboration.
This article appears in the April 2026 Global Interiors Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + from 5 March 2025. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today