strange,’ he says, ‘many architects prefer
their buildings without people in them. Not
us. People are at the heart of what we do.’
This is clear, given a major pivot point in
Rockwell’s work has been the recognition
that design can have an immediate impact on
people’s lives – something that was brought
into relief by two traumatic moments... ‘In
1994 my brother died of AIDS,’ says Rockwell.
‘At the time in New York, you just saw the
entire design community get decimated.
I got involved with the Design Industries
Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) and
ended up its chairman for 12 years. It was a
revelation to see how the act of making was
an act of optimism and defiance.’
Then seven years later, a week after the
terrorist attacks of 9/11, Rockwell was asked
to help a school that was forced to evacuate
and move to an abandoned building. ‘As a
studio we were so deflated, because what
we do is create places for people to engage in
and get pleasure, and that seemed irrelevant
in the face of this disaster,’ he explains.
‘We brought in 30 people from my office
and different artists we knew in the city
and created a sort of urban barn-raising
in this school. Once again I saw the power
of acting.’ This led to more charitable and
philanthropic endeavours, culminating with
the development of the Playground Project,
a pro-bono piece of work done by the
studio to create portable shapes that could
transform unused areas into play spaces
for children with the first site-specific space
opening in Manhattan in 2010.
The connection between Rockwell’s work
and fun doesn’t end there. There aren’t
many renowned architects who count a
Tony (the US’s most celebrated theatre
award) among their accolades, but Rockwell
can. Winning the 2016 Tony Award for Best
Scenic Design for the musical She Loves Me
is a career highlight, but he has had six other
nominations, showing the studio’s proven
aptitude for set design.
‘As a kid I fell in love with the potential of
performance,’ he explains. ‘I worked for a
summer with a theatre on lighting and design
to get that experience. But it wasn’t until the
mid-1990s when the studio was going well,
that I thought it would be interesting to see
what it would be like to work in theatre, and
started meeting directors. It was a risk, but
I’ve always wanted to continue to be open to
new influences, willing to try new things.’
How does he feel his theatre work
blurs with the rest of the studio’s output?‘We believe in creating a world in which
people can have a kind of memorable
engagement,’ he points out. ‘Where they’re
remembering the environment and their
experience in it. So, it’s not coming out of a
show remembering the sets separate from
the story, leaving a restaurant thinking
about the interiors in isolation away from
the food. Rockwell’s latest project, The
Shed at Hudson Yards, New York’s huge
and ambitious urban regeneration project
on the edge of Chelsea, perfectly fuses a
number of the studio’s areas of expertise –
theatre and performance space, museum/
gallery areas and a restaurant and public
lounge. Rockwell describes the joint project
with architecture firm Diller Scofidio and
Renfro as ‘a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’.
‘Liz Diller and I had been friends for a long
time and her studio and I had done work
together,’ says Rockwell. ‘When we were
approached about the project in 2008, we
thought, well, if we do it together, that will
increase the chances that we’ll get it.’
The space-age new arts centre features
a steel-shelled roof in high-tech plastic. It
can be extended to almost double the size
of the eight-storey complex, which includes
two levels of galleries and a theatre, plusClockwise, from left End Grain
‘Ocean’ tiles from the ‘Rockwell’
collection by Bisazza Cementiles.
Sofa from Rockwell’s ‘Sage’ range for
Benchmark. Co-working space at
15 Hudson Yards. Cedric’s at The
Shed restaurant. Lobo 8 restaurant
in Madrid’s Gran Hotel Inglés. Sofa
upholstered in ‘Ambiance’ velvet,
from the ‘Dreams’ collection for
Jim Thompson. Wayan restaurant
in New York. Kaos nightclub at
Palms Casino in Las Vegas