It’s not surprising that Christine and John Gachot of Gachot Studios would infuse their recent redesign of the Smyth TriBeCa hotel with the feeling of home. The couple, whose SoHo-based firm is known for its warm, comfortably chic midcentury aesthetic, have worked on commercial residential properties such as TriBeCa’s Sterling Mason and private homes for boldfaced names like Marc Jacobs and Tumblr’s David Karp. What’s noteworthy, however, is just how closely the hotel’s revamped downstairs library and aptly named Living Room now mirror the Gachots’ own. “We set out to make it feel extremely residential,” says Christine, who previously worked as vice president of design development at Andre Balazs Properties before co-founding Gachot Studios two years ago. “And along the way, when you’re curating a living room, of course it starts to resemble your own living room.”
In the case of the Smyth, the Gachots’ first hotel project, that meant a translation literal enough to include the books on the shelves. “I started with a list that we had — and some of my favorites,” John explains. “I tried to curate different categories: art, photography, garden, landscape architecture. There’s a lot of layering in there.”
After a 10-month transformation that will eventually include the hotel’s 100 guest rooms, the Smyth TriBeCa will unveil its overhauled appearance on Nov. 6 in tandem with the debut of its new ground-floor restaurant, Little Park. The space, which chef Andrew Carmellini and his partners Josh Pickard and Luke Ostrom have taken over to replace the hotel’s former restaurant Plein Sud, was also part of the redesign.
When describing their overall concept for the hotel’s revamped interiors, the Gachots speak more to what’s outside; bringing in a sense of local color was paramount. “People are still making things in TriBeCa, which is really cool,” Christine noted. To more purposefully anchor the hotel to its neighborhood, the pair made a point of shopping at nearby retailers such as Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Company, Urban Archeology, R & Company and Trans-Luxe. “I think people will feel like it’s recognizable as their own aesthetic in TriBeCa. Certainly a loft-living, layered, slightly bohemian midcentury look, which is very iconic,” she said.
Other new features throughout the Smyth’s 7,800-square-foot downstairs space include an assortment of vintage poster prints curated by Sandeep Kaur Salter of McNally Jackson’s Picture Room, a small statuette by the New York-based artist KAWS and an illustrated mural by Matthew Benedict, also a New Yorker, that was fabricated into wallpaper for the hotel’s back barroom. “Anyone who was local that we could involve, we did,” Christine says.
In the Kitchen With Andrew Carmellini at Little Park
The chef lets T into his next TriBeCa restaurant and shares a recipe for beetroot tartar, which he’s testing for the space’s inaugural meal: a benefit dinner for the Lunchbox Fund next week.
