The KPF Principal shares the restaurants, bars, hotels, shops, and observation points whose spatial and material qualities inspire.
“New York is not a single place,” he writes. “It is a collection of vibrant neighborhoods that add up to much more. Scale shifts as you turn a corner. Cross an avenue and you are somewhere else entirely.” Trent has practiced architecture in New York for more than thirty years, and the guide reflects a sensibility shaped by sustained attention to the city at street level. That understanding runs through every recommendation, from the granite ledge at the Seagram Building to Edge at 30 Hudson Yards.
Compiled by Architecture Hunter, Trent’s contribution to the City Guide series is timed to coincide with the annual NYCxDESIGN festival and its accompanying influx of design enthusiasts to the city. His selections span restaurants housed in Federal-era rowhouses and Beaux-Arts ferry terminals, bars whose original 1950s interiors have survived intact, hotels built inside adaptive reuse structures where exposed timber and cast iron remain the primary vocabulary, and shops where the design of the space is inseparable from what is sold.
