SOM x Rarify
A Chair by Any other Name of
by Hannah Bigeleisen, April 2, 2026
SOM x Rarify at the Luisa Via Roma storefront in SoHo showcases a collection of pieces by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the major architectural offices that helped define modern furniture. Selected from Rarify’s collection, the presentation places a particular focus on the contributions of Nicos Zographos, one of SOM’s in-house and later independently commissioned furniture designers. Though the spotlight on Zagraphos is not immediately apparent, the show serves as a somewhat encyclopedic curation of SOM’s interior spaces and the furniture they produced for it from 1950-1991. Set in Luisa Via Roma’s flagship store, catering to upscale clothing designs in the heart of SoHo, is a somewhat interesting pairing for the pieces. The show spans both levels of the space and is meant to activate the interior as much as the work itself.
The first floor of the show is set up in pairings; clothing, shoe, and other decor vignettes that allows David Rosenwasser, CEO of Rarify, to curate many small, but informative groupings. The accompanying ephemera, blueprints, design drawings, photographs from the archives and of the furniture in situ, are as much aesthetic compliments to the clothing racks they are situated with as they are informative. They serve to inform the pieces of furniture to create a simultaneity of space in a sense, you are viewing one image of a massive interior spaces during the rise of the modern, corporate giants with similarly reflected scale in their architecture, and are aware of yourself, standing in a more intimately scaled space and interior.
The furniture pieces are also displayed at a variety of heights that allow the viewer to see specific details: item tags from their original offices, archival information, process oriented design choices like a continuous curve of a chromed leg, or feats of furniture engineering of the time. One chair, placed on its back, seemingly to highlight said tag, also allowing viewers and fellow designers to understand the processes by which the chair was built with as much importance as its final aesthetic.
This is where the emphasis on Zagraphos begins to become apparent. The majority of the pieces begin to emerge as his designs, with the basement level being almost entirely dedicated to his x-wing table variations. An unsung design hero almost as invisible as the pieces themselves were to the outside world. When speaking with Rosenwasser about his focus on collecting Zagraphos’ work, he spoke about it not only as availability, but also the designer’s subtle but demanding attention to detail in both manufacturing processes and the overall aesthetic of the design itself. Certain details emerged, like a curved chrome support that could have been a mitered edge, adding both time and cost to the process, but the refusal to the sacrifice of the detail speaks to something larger than the table design itself. It wasn’t about cutting corners or subscribing to the politic of the design ethos at the time, but developing a design language all his own within the constraints of mass production and industrial engineering to produce a longstanding canon of corporate interior spaces.
Ultimately, the show calls into question a broader theme: how can spaces dedicated to capital develop their own aesthetics outside of the sole pursuit of wealth. The office buildings for which many of these pieces were designed and placed instead sought to promote a different aesthetic ideal, one tied to the Modernist principles of progress and industry, utilizing industrialized processes to create a new aesthetic driven by new materials, new forms, and new ways of interacting with space. Now, corporate environments too often default to a language of neutrality, flattening design into something safe, inoffensive, and ultimately forgettable. In doing so, they sideline the cultural potential of architecture, reducing space to a tool for productivity rather than a medium for expression. Yet these environments hold the capacity to be something more, places where design and architecture actively shape experience, reflect values, and participate in a broader cultural dialogue rather than receding into bland sameness. The pieces presented in the SOM x Rarify collection echo this potential, offering a vision of the workplace as a site of intentional, culturally engaged design.