Plastic, Light and Italian Wit — Photographing the New Kartell Flagship in NoMad
Some brands don’t need to whisper or seduce. They simply put the work in the window — literally — and let it speak. Four windows on the corner of Madison Avenue and East 32nd Street. The Louis Ghost chair by Philippe Starck. The Componibili by Anna Castelli Ferrieri, a woman who helped define post-war Italian design. The Kabuki lamp by Ferruccio Laviani. Kartell has always known exactly what it is.
In 2023, the Milan-based, family-run brand relocated its Manhattan flagship from its original Greene Street home in SoHo to a new 4,300 square foot space at 152 Madison Avenue — two floors of a historic 1920s building in the heart of NoMad, a neighborhood that has quietly become New York’s most concentrated address for design. I was commissioned to photograph it.
The space, designed by FROM Architecture, unfolds across two dynamic levels. Free-standing walls carve the open floor plate into curated vignettes — living arrangements, dining settings, lighting installations — each one a complete idea rather than a product display. The architecture steps back and lets Kartell lead. Which is exactly right.
Photographing a showroom like this is a particular kind of pleasure. The challenge isn’t drama — it’s clarity. Kartell’s work is playful and precise, transparent and opaque, colored and colorless, all at once. You are photographing material intelligence. The way light moves through a Ghost chair. The graphic shadow of a Componibili. The way a room full of plastic somehow feels warm. You have to find the logic of it and trust it.
The images were published in Architectural Digest — one of those moments in a career that lands quietly and means a great deal.
Kartell has been making objects since 1949. Founded in Milan, the brand has always sat at the intersection of art, technology and industrial design — working with the greatest designers of every generation, from Joe Colombo to Philippe Starck to Patricia Urquiola. That history is present in every corner of this space. It is a showroom, yes. But it is also an archive of a certain Italian idea of beauty — that good design belongs to everyone, that plastic can be poetic, that function and joy are not opposites.
If you’re a design brand, architect or agency looking for a photographer who understands Italian design and luxury showroom spaces — in New York City or anywhere in the world — I’d love to hear about it.
