Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1525828
The otherworldly rooms of Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch — founders of New York design and architecture firm Roman and Williams — are portals into another place and time. For The Birdsall, Auberge Resorts Collection hotel in Houston, due to open in 2027, Standefer and Alesch evoke the understated glamour of 1920s River Oaks. In the early days before founding their New York architecture and design firm, Roman and Williams, in 2002, Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch created sets for Hollywood. They worked on such films as New York Stories, Goodfellas, The Age of Innocence, Zoolander, and Duplex, deftly capturing the look and feel of specific locations and eras with unusual antiques, vintage pieces, and a focus on detail and craftsmanship. Movie stars and producers took note, and soon Standefer and Alesch were designing residential interiors for a celebrity clientele. Their first high-profile patron was Ben Stiller, whom they'd gotten to known during Zoolander and Duplex. Kate Hudson later became a client after seeing how they transformed Stiller's 1920s Spanish-style house in Los Angeles, with moody aquamarine walls and aubergine velvet sofas. "I was drawn to how specific their eye was," Hudson said in a 2022 New York Times interview. "I think that must have come from them working in film. You're telling a story about who a character is and why they live there." Fittingly, the first official Roman and Williams office opened in 2003 in a warehouse on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood. New York offices opened a year later, and the firm expanded into commercial projects. Their earliest jobs included the interiors of André Balazs' award-winning Ace Hotel in New York. Here, Standefer and Alesch imagined a "grand dilapidated country house that The Doors holed up in to make a record, or maybe an old-money retreat where a kid threw a big party when the parents weren't around," as they wrote in their 2012 book, Roman and Williams Buildings and Interiors: Things We Made. The Lobby Bar was filled with taxidermy, tartan-upholstered seating, vintage British campaign chairs, and an enormous American flag. Over more than 20 years, Roman and By Rebecca Sherman. Renderings Roman and Williams. THE HIGH PROFILE ROMAN AND WILLIAMS DESIGN FIRM LEAVES ITS CALLING CARD AT THE BIRDSALL AUBERGE HOTEL 46