Gaetano Pesce : The Chiat\Day Project

An architect before becoming a designer, Gaetano Pesce (1939–2024) created one of the most striking architectural projects of the decade in 1994, in response to a commission from Jay Chiat, founder of Chiat\Day, the trendy communications agency based in New York and Los Angeles. Inspired by the innovative apartment, imbued with a sense of total freedom, created by the Italian maestro for Ruth Shuman, Jay Chiat wanted “a virtual office, with no set hours, no partitions, no paper, no designated workstations, entirely digital”.

Before the all-digital era, 180 Maiden Lane became a playground and laboratory for experimentation. The furniture and structures were coated in resin, a material in which Gaetano Pesce specialises, as “it fosters joy, discovery and stimulation, in harmony with the characteristics of the human body: flexibility, transparency, joy and colour”. The whole space is conceived like the narrow streets of a village, following the contours of a face, and organised around different zones: a cafeteria, meeting rooms, a video room, as well as a dozen spaces reserved for the agency’s key clients.

Doors, tables, chairs, storage units, desks, sofas, lighting: Gaetano Pesce has designed a complete collection for Chiat\Day, brought together in this previously unpublished catalogue. An exceptional photographic feature, preparatory drawings and archive images from the Gaetano Pesce Studio allow us to grasp the scale and ambition of this landmark project in Gaetano’s career.