Wrapping up this series with a final batch of visits. Included here are two of the larger group shows, American Design Club’s One Night Stand and the lamp show Shine staged by NYCxDesign. All NYCxDesign 2026 posts on Seen.Today can be found here.
Photos and Text: Dave Pinter
Additional Text: NYCxDesign
Bernhardt Design
The evening prior to ICFF opening day, Bernhardt hosted a showroom opening previewing new work from Art Center College students. It was a change to wander around the sleek and meticulously clean interior and take note of the very muted color palette.
American Design Club – One Night Stand
AMDC’s annual show is one I look forward to. The themes are creative and the work spans a wide gamut. For 2026 it was a look at the bedside objects that support a sleep ritual. The exhibition occupied the lobby of the citizenM Hotel on Bowery and as the name implies there were nightstands of many varieties. In all nearly 70 designers and studios presented work spanning lighting, hydration, health and journaling.
Shine
NYCxDesign moved on from a couple years of Souvenir to a group show of lamps. In all 70 designers participated in Shine that skewed towards the artistic and decorative. It was an interesting show to try and guess the designer by the lamp, many were pretty obvious. Overall a great show and a nice mix of well known names and new talent.
Full Description
“Shine is not a show about New York City itself, but a reflection of the culture and people who inhabit it,” says industrial designer Harry Allen, who suggests that exceptional lighting-like individuals-possess distinct personalities.
For the 2026 edition of NYCxDESIGN, Allen set out to assemble a community of lamps that mirror the city’s character-a constellation of individuals that, together, form a vibrant and varied collective.
Under Allen’s curatorial direction, NYCxDESIGN invited designers to submit new lighting prototypes for inclusion in the exhibition, with the aim of showcasing work that emphasizes craft, technology, personal expression, and function. Most entries are from New Yorkers, with a few tangentially related, and others just visitors-because what would New York be without tourists?
The name, Shine, refers both to quality of light and to character.
As anticipated, the exhibition drew a wide range of submissions, reflecting both the diversity of the city and the breadth of current design approaches. “It’s difficult to identify a single unifying thread in design today, but within the framework of Shine, plurality becomes the point,” says Allen. There is strength in difference.
Rolls-Royce Private Office
One final stop, and indeed a special visit to The Rolls-Royce Private Office, a Manhattan space not open to the public. This space opened a few years ago and serves as the main client meeting space in the city since Rolls-Royce doesn’t maintain their own dealership here. Part hospitality apartment, design studio and management offices, it’s one of those stealthy NYC locales you’d never know existed.
The occasion for my visit was to hear from Domagoj Dukec is the Director of Design at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars talk about the personalization process and Rolls commitment to working with artists and craftspeople. Nearly all Rolls-Royce vehicles are personalized, whether that be a unique selection of colors and finishes to interior elements that realize a client’s vision through paint, woodwork, embroidery or metal fabrication.
Rolls-Royce production run is already very limited and few of those are shared publicly. This was a unique opportunity to see some of the bespoke capabilities and an environment that levels up to the high stature of the brand
