Think Tank

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The Culture Creative’s Sean Yashar takes us inside his studio that is a sanctuary for imagination

The rectangular doorway, which Yashar has dubbed a “digital-to-analog portal,” leads to Yashar’s private suite. Its shape was inspired by the design of the iPhone. Photos by Kort Havens.

A conversation with The Culture Creative’s Sean Yashar is a roller coaster of references, as his mind nimbly skips from pop culture to high culture. The design theorist and brand strategist—as enamored of the aesthetics of the ’80s and ’90s as he is educated in the history of contemporary art and design—is a true polymath. A generic office would never work. “I need a place to be creative. To think, to read, to write, to research,” Yashar explains.

A plucked-from-the-’80s black leather sofa and vintage chairs by Peter Shire and Ron Arad cluster around an articulated coffee table that pays homage to Yashar’s admiration for conceptual designer Dan Friedman. The chrome Philippe Starck side table is a vintage piece from New York’s Royalton Hotel. Photos by Kort Havens.

The seeds for the ideal space manifested when a property near the home that Yashar shares with his partner, interior designer Oliver M. Furth, became available. “It’s a small cottage on a large piece of land,” Furth explains. Enormous stone pines umbrella the landscape, creating an inspiring woodland setting. “As is, it would not have appealed to a lot of people,” Furth confirms. “But for us, it was perfect.”

The Culture Creative’s brand color, a pale eau de nil green that drenches the cottage’s surfaces, Smeg kitchen appliances and plumbing fixtures, is treated as a neutral. A prototype of a laminate and oak café table by Yashar’s client, emerging design duo Studio Muka, is paired with Philippe Starck’s Hi-Glob chairs.
Photos by Kort Havens.
Voluptuous balloon shades unite two opposing inspirations that anchor the ’90s— the Dickies twill pants that underlined the rise of streetwear and the Regency-inspired decor of Mario Buatta. Track lights inspired by high- tech muse Joe D’Urso illuminate a set of Marc Newson “Brat Green” lacquer tables paired with 18th-century Chippendale chairs. Photos by Kort Havens.

Yashar naturally tapped Furth for the task of transformation. The couple, who’ve been together for 14 years, have a shared design language that permeates their life. “We are both very interested in beauty, comfort and moving the decorative arts conversation forward, understanding that it’s not pushed from the past as much as pulled from the future,” Yashar explains. For Furth, who describes his work as a type of portraiture, “A successful interior is one where you get to know someone’s personality from being in their space,” Yashar is both an ideal client and a consummate creative partner. “In a way,” Yashar explains, “I hired my designer to decorate my mind in a physical form.”

In Yashar’s office, mirrored PVC vertical blinds salute the high-tech excess of the ’80s. A Sam Maloof desk chair sits behind a vintage Joe D’Urso for Knoll desk and under an Ingo Maurer “Zettel’z” chandelier. The Wrinkled Stool is by Christopher Prinz. The felt-clad speaker is a prototype courtesy of Yashar’s clients Studio Ahead. The framed magazine ads promote Moda Italia, his parent’s furniture store. Photos by Kort Havens.

Furth began by drenching the tiny cottage’s walls, floors, ceilings, ceramic tiles, stone surfaces, kitchen appliances and powder-coated plumbing fixtures in a pastel eau de nil that conjures up the early 1990s of Yashar’s tweens. Yashar is obsessed with the shade; it’s the background color for The Culture Creative’s website and the hue of its stationery. “I think of it as a palate cleanser,” Yashar explains. “Like the mint sorbet served between the courses of a formal dinner.” That’s its role here, a clever swap for the expected gallery white walls that pivots these rooms and their contents toward something much more sly. That it can embrace a myriad of interpretations—art deco, mid-century modern—is catnip to Yashar’s dynamic mind. (The semiotics of design is another enthusiasm the couple shares).

A brown lacquer and chrome Pierre Cardin credenza sits under a prototype of Ron Arad’s “Bookworm” shelf in Yashar’s office. Photos by Kort Havens.

The birthdate of streetwear, in which Dickies pants played a significant role, coincided with Yashar’s early childhood. The counterpoint to that movement was interior designer Mario Buatta, who took the cue for his high-end designs from the Regency period. Furth combined the two references, fashioning Buatta’s signature balloon shades from khaki twill for window treatments. Creating them challenged his facility for turning fantasy into a workable reality. “The weight and hand of the fabric tested the limits of what could be functional,” Furth notes.

The primary bathroom upholds the cottage’s eau de nil palette. A Piet Hein Eek mirror reflects a rare 1990s Successories “Innovation” poster. Photos by Kort Havens.

Against this powerful backdrop, Furth layered in furniture and accessories that not only reflect Yashar’s experiences, obsessions and inspirations but also the ideas, objects and his relationships in the design and art worlds that energize the couple’s partnership. There’s the persistent tango of the decadent ’80s—the sitting room’s worn black leather sofa, the office’s mirrored PVC vertical blinds—with the skepticism of the ’90s—the articulated coffee table in the living room that honors conceptual thinker Dan Friedman, the meeting room’s punk-belligerent green Marc Newson tables. There are the Peter Shire drop cloths—created for an art show the couple produced—that act as curtains in the mediation room, recalling the drapery in Napoleon’s bedroom at Malmaison. Yashar describes the entryway’s Max Lamb cardboard stool, Skye Chamberlain candle sconce and Ross Hansen ceramic shelf as “a triangulation of design friends.”

The meditation room is an analog monochrome rock garden of shapes that include ceramic polyhedron tables by Peter Lane and bespoke bag chairs rendered in velvet by Natasha Baradaran Textiles, a studio for which Yashar serves as a resident creative director. The Peter Shire paint-splattered drop cloths, created for a Furth-Yashar exhibition on the artist in 2019, conjure up Napoleon’s bedroom at Malmaison. Photos by Kort Havens.

There are pieces inspired by Yashar’s heroes, his personal narrative and milestones in the history of design: the high-tech track lighting in the meeting room recalls Joe D’Urso’s interiors for a young Calvin Klein; the framed magazine tear sheets in the office advertise Yashar’s parents’ furniture store, Moda Italia; the serene walled courtyard evokes Yashar’s Persian heritage; the rounded corners of the rectangular archways salute the shape of the iPhone and, in one of the cottage’s many tongue-in-cheek moments, lead to Yashar’s collection of books and magazines (Yashar dubs it “a digital-to-analog portal”). Furth deftly wove in pieces from Yashar’s clients: a Natasha Baradaran velvet covers the bespoke bean-bag chairs in the meditation room; a café table by Studio Muka is in the kitchen; Pinky’s Iron Doors created the French doors that open to the courtyard, which showcases a ceramic coffee table by Peter Lane and tableware from Nickey Kehoe; Studio Ahead’s prototype felted sheepskin speakers amplify music in the office; a Jane Hallworth light illuminates the powder room.

A walled courtyard includes a dining area that showcases an ’80s Arthur Court bronze table surrounded by Alwy Visschedyk chairs. Photos by Kort Havens.

The result is a provocative and profound, chic and cheeky experience that, like a conversation with Yashar, celebrates design’s ability to tickle and excite the mind. A pure example of the eternal delight that occupies the curious minds of Yashar and Furth.