Hospitality Design - August 2011 - 67

pro le: s. russell groves

products
By Michael Adams

simple elegance
From living in a small town in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, to creating award-winning restaurants, high-end residences, and retail stores for Armani and Tiffany may seem an unlikely journey, but S. Russell Groves has accomplished it with agility and enviable success. The path perhaps should have been apparent from his childhood, when his family moved to the U.S., but not necessarily to Groves himself. “I loved Legos, Erector Sets, and anything else that resembled creating a building,” he says, “but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an architect until I was at school”—the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). “I sampled a lot of different areas at RISD,” he recalls, “fashion, graphics, ﬁlmmaking, even printmaking, but eventually architecture and interior design won out after freshman year.” won an AIA award. We had hit the ground running.” Product design seemed a natural ﬁt. “I love the immediate process of products. They allow me to evoke my whole design vision in miniature, like creating a short story instead of a novel.” Groves’ latest “miniatures” are a lighting line for Swarovski, and two self-propelled furniture lines, SRG Classic and SRG Dentro. For Swarovski, he has created a line of ﬁxtures that he calls “graceful and architectural, that showcase the crystals.” Using the geometry of icicles and stalactites, he set out to fashion ﬁxtures that can be used in any setting—“commercial or residential, contemporary or traditional.” The Classic collection concentrates on simple forms, says Groves, After graduation, Groves “cut his teeth” with such giants as Richard Meier and Peter Marino, and learned from the latter to look at projects “holistically—to be equally passionate about all aspects of the design process.” He opened the S. Russell Groves ofﬁce in New York City in 1995 and soon put himself on the map with the Tea Box at the Takashimaya department store in Manhattan. “It got a great response,” he says, “and for tables, chairs, and sideboards that are spare and at the same time luxurious. Dentro—Italian for “inside”—features furniture notable for its sustainability. “We practice what I call ‘glamour green,’” he says. “Being green doesn’t mean you have to sacriﬁce beauty, luxury, or reﬁnement. You can have the best of both worlds.” www.srussellgroves.com; www.swarovski.com

Clockwise from top: The Davis Lounge Chair, from the SRG Classic collection, fashioned to be both simple and elegant; from SRG Dentro, whose emphasis is on sustainability, the Slash table; the Triple Pendant lighting fixture from Swarovski, reflecting the geometry of icicles and stalactites; and the Tuxedo sofa, also from SRG Dentro.

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August 2011

http://www.srussellgroves.com http://www.swarovski.com http://www.hospitalitydesign.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - August 2011