In this episode, we speak with designer Giancarlo Valle about balancing openness and intention, the drawbacks of specialization, and why uncertainty is key to impactful design.

Podcast produced by Ryan Leahey
Original theme music by Kasper Bjørke
Photographs by Clement Pascal

Landon Metz:
It’s nice to have someone in the studio! It's like a different energy, it’s cool.

Giancarlo Valle:
We actually work on the same floor.

Christopher Schreck:
Giancarlo, have you been there since you established the studio? 

GV:
It was a slow move, a slow progression to Canal Street. We started on Broadway and Walker in an old pre-war office building, and then got pushed out of that for rent reasons and then started looking.

LM:
Did you team change when you moved? 

GV:
Yeah, there was always a shift - a team shift and then a physical space shift - but we've always been really involved in the renovation. When we first moved here, the entire floor was all drop ceiling, no skylights, everything was covered. Then we saw a little bit of light coming through one of the one of the ceiling tiles, we saw all this staining, and we were like, “Oh! There's light underneath here!” And then we were like, “Okay we’ve got to do this.” But that was in 2018.

LM:
You're the reason I'm here. You were like, “Landon, there's a space. You should get it.”

GV:
Well, originally, I wanted the space. [laughs] But I couldn't do it all, and I was like, “Okay, the next best thing? One of my favorite artists.”

LM:
You can always have a desk over here. You can use my desk, set your computer right here.

GV:
We've been talking about it: How do we unify the sixth floor, conceptually?

LM:
We could tear some walls down. We could share this space back here and make a little living room with a bed. I need a place to sleep in my studio, for sure. And now there's another space available. Are you going to take it? 

GV:
I think I'm going to take it. It’s the slow takeover.

LM:
We made merge for the building. 264 Canal Street merch. 

GV:
Sold out. [laughs]

LM:
It's unavailable. Wait list only. [laughs]

CS:
So how many people are working at the studio at this point?

GV:
We are 12.

CS:
Are they all full-time?

GV:
Everyone's full-time. We've really just been growing organically, because we've never felt like we've needed to do anything that didn't feel right. It's just been slow and gradual. The energy post-COVID has been incredible, and it's really building back the culture of the office and the studio, which I think is where the magic happens. We're in every day, and there's just a lot of energy that that I feed off of.

LM:
What does your day-to-day look like?

GV:
It’s so unpredictable. I mean, that's why I love what I do. It's also been this gradual shift out of architecture and my background and my experience working professionally, which I would say was maybe more “by the book.” It was very traditional architecture schooling, and after that working for a couple great architects in the city. Architecture is incredibly predictable: it’s very slow, it's very plan-based, so you have to be organized to do it. Whereas there's an unpredictable nature to the interior side of what we do that I think counteracts the architecture. You're putting out fires. You're solving problems, but very directly, and having to improvise in a way that I don't think you can actually improvise with architecture. There's a sort of jazz element to interiors and furniture that I think I feed off of, and then it sort of filters back into the architecture.

LM:
You can just show up and be more intuitive in responding to a site, a conversation, a feeling.

GV:
Yeah, I think it's a feeling. That's hard to do with the architectural work that we do, but I think you need both.

LM:
When you're working on an architectural project, do you ever get to a point where you're like “I really thought this thing was going to work, but in person the feeling is off or wrong”? Can you can you make adjustments on the fly like that?

GV:
That's a good question. I think you have to, but you also just have to be in tune with it regularly. Be open to change. You plan for the best version of it, and then you know that maybe XYZ might change, and you have to be okay with the inevitability of that. Design is interesting because it's a conversation between decisions that are made and then decisions that are made for you. There are things that that pre-exist a project and sort of determine certain things, and then you make decisions about what you want to do. Those two things come together and bring you to a point that you couldn't have otherwise.

LM:
As an artist, it’s about having a personal sense of taste and then just making a bunch of decisions. You have to make decisions all the time, but none of the decisions are made for you. You're facing the abyss every day, whereas I feel like having some of that decision-making process folded into the workflow actually sounds very nice. There’s some security in it, where it's like, you can only go so far before there's some natural pushback. It sounds great, actually.

GV:
It's inevitable. You have budgets, timelines, client demands, site conditions, and a lot of those just take you down a path, and then it's about how you decide to go this way or that way against each one of those. It’s a constraint, and you have to be comfortable in that sort of unknown, that you don't necessarily know everything when you come into it, but you have to trust in that process. 

CS:
Yeah. We had Minjae [Kim] on the show for the first season, and we were talking with him about the myth of autocracy, and how he had to set aside these notions of the individual designer as auteur and recognize how all these outside contributors were actually collaborators, whether it was his team, his clients, or other artisans. I guess I could pose a similar question to you, in terms of how you then gain a sense of ownership over the results. It seems like there might be a little bit of ambiguity there. 

GV:
Yeah. I mean, we work with a lot of clients that have strong personal taste, yet at the same time, they're coming to me and the studio for a perspective, right? I think the stronger the client, the better the project, in a way. If we were given carte blanche, and they said, “Okay, create the perfect version of what you want to do,” I wouldn't know how to start. I just love that there's embedded energy in the client that we have to play off of or sort of solve. To me, that's the training. It's everything that’s been a lead-up to where I am now that makes the process happen. That's the formula for us.

LM:
But people are also coming to you because you have a distinct sense of poetry. They may have opinions and their own sense of taste, and maybe those are really strong, but still, they could go to someone else who would listen to everything that they say and maybe have less of an opinion. I think what people come to you for is this very unique sort of artistry that you bring the table. 

GV:
Yeah. The poetry is one thing, but you also have to be open to change. I'm constantly in this evolutionary process of refining what I like to do, and I would say that the DNA the office is that we're constantly working off of existing ideas and just tweaking them. It’s like a Darwinian thing: it just keeps evolving, and we're like, “Okay, take this, this, and this, evolve it into this project. What could it be? Does it make sense? Scrap it. Go again.” You just keep massaging and tweaking.

LM:
You're riding a wave, and it’s undefinable.

GV:
Yeah. It’s undefinable, but it's there. It’s actually in the space. We make a lot of models and miniatures of our projects, and that is very intentional, because we want to see the idea. Even if it's incomplete, it has to be there - and then you just pick up that idea. It’s like a graveyard of ideas right now in the studio, and you just pick up anything, like, “Okay. How could this get combined with that and turn into this?”

LM:
Do you just intuitively walk around the studio while you're thinking and talking about a project and grab something that feels just feels good?

GV:
Yeah. 

LM:
It’s like, “OK, I like this thing right now. How would this translate to this project?”

GV:
Yeah. There’s a way of thinking about it, which is that the ideas of design don't belong to a single person - they belong to the field of design, and it's up to you what you do with those ideas. So it’s a bit more removed, and it takes the personality out of it a little bit, which I kind of like, but it makes the decision-making process a little different. You say, “These ideas don't belong to me or you. They're part of this larger arc of design, this historical trajectory, and it’s about how you use it.” I mean, a lot of things have been designed already. They’re very well-designed, and it's like asking, “How do you build on the shoulders of an idea to bring it forward?” I think that's how you connect things to history, and that's how you bring yourself forward.

LM:
Also, design is so intrinsically tethered to the human experience, right? The scale of our body, the comforts of our body. There's a gigantic list of prerequisites for how we experience clothing or cars or spaces or homes or libraries or doctors’ offices. There are all these ways in which we navigate those spaces - physically, but also emotionally and intuitively. How we feel when we're in these places, what the lighting is like, what the colors are like: we have a kind of cultural general understanding before we step into these spaces. There's a whole inherited list of prerequisites for how we engage with design, and you know that intuitively. You don’t to think, “A chair should defy gravity for the human body and it should be relatively similar in scale to a person.” You don't even have to think about that, you know it intuitively. There's lots of things in our society or culture in design that you know, and that everyone intuitively knows, so I think half of that decision-making process has been made for you. You just kind of tap into other modes of expression within that history.

GV:
Yeah, and it's been an evolution for me, moving from architectural training into design, because architecture in the last ten years has been on this track towards being more and more marginalized in terms of how It's executed. Teams are getting more complex, projects are more complex, and the last domain of architecture has been exteriors. This is like the one thing that architects are holding on to, because now there are space planners, and engineers, and all these consultants that can take over for lighting. What used to be the field of an architect is now being subdivided into all these different specializations. The last specialization has been the façade, the exterior, the face of the building – and so when I was in my training, that was at the top of the conversation. It was all about how to reinvent the façade, the face the building, which is a very postmodern idea. It was kind of the sacred space that architects could still own.

LM:
It’s also free to the public to perceive. It's democratic, in the sense that anyone can see it from a distance, especially in the skyline. So it’s a gigantic advertisement, whereas with the interiors of these spaces, there may be a hierarchy as to how you can engage with them. It’s harder to access. So you can't really choose which internal spaces people can experience and how and why, but with a façade, it's free and it's available to the public.

GV:
Exactly. That was sort of the mission: we were designing for the skyline and for the city, in many ways, and it left the interiors totally unexplored for me. So that's been the move, to really identify how people live, and to understand feeling more so than style. How do you capture a feeling in an interior that you can't do with an exterior in the same way? It just triggered different emotions.

LM:
Moving through your space is like being at your home in Connecticut. There's this theatricality to how you move through the dining room to a hallway to a living room through a stairway or corridor or whatever. You use color and these dramatic visual statements to really have hard lines between different environments. It feels very dramatic and it feels very experiential. It’s like watching a film or something. It's quite beautiful.

GV:
Yeah. It’s the personal projects that I think I've learned the most from. I feel like I always have to have a project to be able to work on other projects, because I can make a million mistakes on my home and be okay with it, and then make sure that we get the appropriate version of it into our clients’ homes.

LM:
Actually, I experienced that being at your house, and I wanted to ask you about it. What is the relationship between the studio and your home? I feel like at home, you have people working on the projects materially while you're there on the weekends or whatever, so you’re always still kind of in that headspace. Even when you're relaxing for the weekend, you're still you're living in your workspace. That is probably the ultimate showroom or example of your work. It’s also the most private, but there's something about it where it still feels like you are kind of tinkering when you're there, and it never really seems like you can turn it off. 

GV:
It’s true. You have to be able to be responsive to it. I think that's why I really enjoy this process of evolution. Also, since having kids, and seeing how they interact with spaces and where they tend to go and not go has been really eye-opening for me. I feel like that part of it just keeps me on my toes, too. There’s just a naive quality to what they're attracted to or not attracted to that keeps me trying to ask the same questions and untrain myself a little bit from what you inherit over time.

CS:
Yeah. That's an interesting part of it: that since establishing your studio, you've also started a family with your wife Jane. Something Landon and I talk about is the challenge of sustaining a creative practice while also dedicating oneself to romantic and domestic commitments, especially when children are involved. It’d be interesting to hear how you've gone about finding the balance for yourself.

GV:
I think it's actually brought a lot of order to my life, because time is so efficient and precious that my time management has gotten exponentially better. It's still full of daily challenges, but there is a comfort knowing that there's a priority set - and the family is it. So how do you integrate your creative output into that? And I think they pick up on that. I think they're intrigued by it and want to know more about what their dad and mom do. 

LM:
Yeah, they want to see you guys thriving as well.

GV:
Yeah. It's a very positive thing. Jane and I work on these homes together. She's an editor, so she’s coming from very different mindset and has a great way of seeing through all the noise that I tend to produce and pluck out the things that have staying power. 

CS:
Yeah. Being creative on a schedule forces you to be more dialed in on one level, but it's it's also interesting because it means you can't spend as much time deliberating or second-guessing or worrying about this and that. You have to become more instinctual and trust the vocabulary and the skills and the knowledge that you’ve built over time.

GV:
You do. You also have to be accepting of the decision, right? You have to know that that decision, if it has to be made at a certain time, there's something in that that you have to be comfortable with, and that's the part that I think just takes time.

LM:
I think it's like about understanding that any singular gesture doesn't define you wholly; it's just a reflection of where you're at in a period of time. It doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to be an attempt at pointing in the right direction on any given day. It just moves you somewhere, and you can respond to wherever you're at. I always say, “You can't use clay you don't have yet.” You have to be in a position and then respond to it and deal with it and make decisions, and that will lead to other situations where you have to do the same. But that that process is rooted in failure, and that's how you learn and grow. It doesn't have to be like, “If I don't get this right, I'm not a great artist. I'm not a great poet. I'm not a great XYZ.” It’s just a reflection of where I was at any given day. It just kind of reduces the power in that sense overall in your life. You can just make micro-decisions all the time.

CS:
Speaking of family and creativity, I also wanted to ask you about Paloroma. Basically, you and Jane founded a skincare brand dedicated specifically to children?

GV:
Yes. Like with all these things, they come out of an urgent need to find something that you don't think exists, and that's how it started. Jane was pregnant with our second child, our daughter, and we were just looking for something that was clean, that would be a staple, and that also had an elevated sense about it that was consistent with the other things that we buy and like to put in our home. So it just came out of that search. There really wasn't anything that checked all those boxes, and the idea to combine the names of our children into this brand kind of kicked it off. It really a core set of products – essentials, really - that are part of your daily routine as parents and are really built into your relationship with your kids, like bathing. It’s all part of this routine that we really enjoy and try to be part of on a daily basis with our children. It's also a brand that I think can grow with the child - so it's not just a baby brand, it’s for children. I actually use it every day as well. 

CS:
Did I read somewhere that you had family members when you were growing up in the skincare business? 

GV:
Yes. My family is in the skincare business and have been supporters of this project, helping us in a very small way to get it off the ground.

CS:
We've been talking about how you've deliberately built kind of a multi-hyphenate practice, where you're moving between different fields, different methods, but always pointedly framing the work within a single studio, a single vision. We alluded a little while back to how that approach might have come (at least in part) as a response to your experiences in architectural schools and at different firms, but I wonder: As you were making that transition, were there other practitioners or studios that you looked to as reference or even as inspiration?

GV:
I think historically, there's been a group of people that I've looked at, always: Frank Lloyd Wright, Gio Ponti, people that were looking at design without scale. I felt like that was an art and a practice that had existed historically, but my experience in New York was that it was very siloed. You'd have the architecture, the interiors, the decoration, and they were really different camps. In Europe, you still see many practices that work across them all, but I wasn't seeing that in New York, or even in the United States. I think that's changed - I think that tendency has grown - but when I was first starting, I was looking to Europe a lot to understand how those practices had grown and evolved. People like Pierre Ivanovich or Joseph Dirand are practicing that way now and doing it on an incredibly high level, but there's also something like Studio Peregalli, who does architecture and does it in a beautiful and quiet way, where you know it’s a Peregalli project, but you also don't know how they did it. There's just so much mystery around how they work and how they are able to really touch all elements of it.

LM:
Do you think that's a reflection of how art was historically situated within European cultures and societies versus the US? I think people have a more intimate relationship to art and poetry historically in Western Europe than they would in the US, where it was maybe more labor-motivated. But I feel like maybe there’s a paradigm shift happening in the States now, where there's a greater acclimation to experiencing art in new ways and it's kind of changing the expectations around what it means to live with objects that resemble art.

GV:
I think that's true. I would say in New York, there's a tremendous amount of output right now in this area - and other areas as well in the US, but my experience has been here. It does feel like it's changed. Then my mind goes to Frank Lloyd Wright, and I think about how that practice developed over time, and how it felt like it was a kind of outlier in that moment, but now is seen in a way that makes total sense. You're getting reacquainted with the idea that you can move through these spaces and these projects seamlessly.

LM:
I grew up really close to Taliesin West in Scottsdale. I used to go all the time with my dad. There's something really intimate and very vulnerable about being in a space where all the objects and the placement of the objects has been articulated by the architect as well, where it feels like the vessel that contains the life isn't where the story ends – it continues and it continues and it continues. It's like a Russian doll experience, where you’re walking up, seeing the landscape, seeing the chosen plot of land, and seeing the materials and how they were placed from that natural landscape. So as you approach the building itself, the landscape and the environment and the ambience and the aura of the place itself is clearly a part of the work, and then you see the structure itself, and then you see the poetry in the language of the structure and how the materials are used. And then you cross that barrier, that threshold, into the interior, the more intimate space, and you see the relationship of the structure to the chairs and the placement of the chairs and the way you move through the space is now actually being emphasized by the placement of the objects and the materials of the objects. So maybe there's a bit more of a “macro” experience with the facade of an architectural piece, but there’s a more “micro” experience as you move in it - not just a visual language, but a sensibility, a way of being, that’s also translated to the interior. Again, it's not even the materials and the scale of the objects, but it’s the placement and how that kind of relates to the choreography of how we move through these places and what it means to navigate through an interior, an intimate space, and our own sense of awareness of our bodies and our comfort levels and how we get to sit down and relax and have a conversation or whatever. It feels very intimate, like you're really tethered and connected to the psyche of the person who made this work. You’re not being kept at arm's length; you really feel like this person is like meeting you more than halfway, so the experience is kind of holistic. 

GV:
It’s interesting that you grew up near Taliesin West. I grew up near all the Chicago projects, so my relationship to Franklin right was that: it was the studio, it was these very small spaces, very hermetic. And then just earlier this year, I went to the Hollyhock House in LA, which blew my mind. 

CS:
Yeah! I was just there about a month ago. 

GV:
Really? Yeah, obviously, he's been somebody that I think about a lot, but to go see that house, and the looseness of that house… I mean, there's a history with Schindler apparently going out there to oversee that house. So there was a set of ideas and a simplification, a more reductive version of Frank Lloyd Wright right, which I really hadn't experienced in person. That was just incredibly refreshing and brought into sharper focus for me what it is he was doing and how he evolved. I mean, there are just so many different influences that were at play, and to see that house and walk through it and then come back to New York and go through the Guggenheim, I feel like I'm just rethinking his work, having studied it and had it back in my mind for so many years. To see things again and to experience them after having been doing what I've been doing for a while, it's reassuring. There’s definitely a newfound appreciation for it.

CS:
Have you ever heard of Kevin Kelly? 

GV:
No.

CS:
He's a really interesting guy. He was a founding editor of Wired Magazine, and he published the Whole Earth Review, so he's interested in alternative technology, digital utopianism, he's a conservationist, etc. But when I was doing research for this conversation, I came across this quote of his that made me of think of you. Basically, he says, “A standalone object, no matter how well-designed, has only a limited potential for new weirdness.” The idea is that an object situated in a network, or within a space intentionally, can take on countless new meanings and associations that never would have come about on its own - so design, at a certain point, ultimately becomes a medium of conversation as much as one-off composition. I wonder how you relate to this idea of interrelation, both as a designer and as a collector.

GV:
That’s really interesting. I think so much of the way I look at something is context-driven. When I'm looking at a piece of design, of historical design, I'm thinking about the arc of that object. I'm thinking about where it may have come from. Did it grow out of a set of ideas which were maybe on the fringe of that particular period of time that I latched on to because it was somehow marginalized, and now I’m bringing that to the center? I'm looking at periods and trajectories that had a little bit of that outsider mentality, where you're trying to understand why something went this way, especially when it doesn't fit into the arc of this particular designer, and then connect that to what's happening today. But I also think the way I look at design a little bit through an outsider’s lens, you just have to wear that that hat sometimes to break free of your own decision trees, you know? You’re in this process of unlearning to get to a place that you couldn't have otherwise.

LM:
There's an objective freshness to seeing things with new eyes as often as possible – but it’s really hard to untangle your own mind and do that. 

GV:
Yeah. It's removing yourself from the process a little bit. It’s being okay with bad decisions and okay decisions and great decisions - just treating them a little bit more from afar and trusting the process and bringing your instinct into sharper focus.

LM:
What is your relationship to taste? Because I think a lot of what you're saying about finding these marginalized tracks within these aesthetic languages and refocusing them towards the center, it seems like maybe things were perceived as outsider for political reasons, or maybe they were perceived as kitschy or in poor taste or less than perfect taste. The internet has a lot to do that, I'm sure - the flattening of information, the way information is disseminated and how those hierarchies have been broken down a lot, but I also think it’s recasting what it means to have good taste, or what taste even is, or if bad taste even can exist in 2023. I think about the possibility of bad taste existing anymore all the time. I'm conflicted as to whether I think it's something that exists. I think it's just a matter of who you are and where you are, and the conversations that you're having, and how you reframe that. So what is your relationship to taste? Do you believe in good taste? Do you think you have good taste?

GV:
I think that's where you have to go really far into yourself and trust that -  but I also think you have to be able to edit. People used to say Mies van der Rohe was great at designing buildings because he ignored many aspects of the building. He really didn't have to consider every element; he just focused on the ones that he thought were essential. I think there's just that level of instinct, which comes with an entire career of building and seeing what you can do, where you get to that point where you know that you don't have to solve every problem.

LM:
Well, yeah. I mean, on a human level, you cannot - and if one believes that they can, it's not a very nice person to be around. There's no humility in that. I don't really think you can solve any problems. You can just do your personal best and see what happens, and be open to change and growth over time. 

GV:
Yeah.

LM:
I wanted to ask you one last thing, which was the about your upbringing and how you got to New York, and your family, and the culture that brought you here.

GV:
Yeah. It was also very slow evolution. I would say the beginning was through art school. I went to art school knowing that I was probably going transfer into architecture, because an aunt who's a sculptor and who I had admired since I was very young told me I could not go into the art world. 

LM:
That would have made me want to do it so much more. [laughs]

GV:
Exactly. So it was the most roundabout way of getting back into it, but still from afar, because I think what we do is totally different than art.

LM:
Why? I need to know your answer to that question.

GV:
Because of what we were talking about earlier: I need the feedback, I need the constraint, and that constraint has to come from outside of me. I think that's one of the fundamental differences: you're creating the constraints, while I'm relying on others.

LM:
There's a control in your system. I don't mean like you have personal control, but there's like a controlled network in your system, whereas as an artist, you just face the abyss.

GV:
Yes - and you have to create that, right? You have to create the constraint and the rule. 

LM:
Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to relinquish rules in my life right now and just trust my intuition and be comfortable flying free and having fun and making work that feels reflective of wherever I'm at. I'm trying to let go of as much as possible in my practice. I think that's kind of my path, as a human and as an artist, is learning to do that as much as possible, to just fully let go. I think that the synthesis as a working artist is when you make something and someone likes it and talks to you about it, that wants to show it, there's a conversation there that feels like responsibility. There's something that feels more like a control, more like what you're saying. But when I'm in the studio, I think my responsibility is to let that go and to make work from a very genuine, authentic, whole, and real place, and I think that comes from tapping into something that is the opposite of rules and systems. It's completely free, pure freedom, which I think can actually be quite terrifying for most people. I think most humans are so comfortable and familiar with a grid being laid over their experience and their lives that to kind of peek under that or remove that or turn around entirely could be quite a terrifying proposition - which is why really great art can be so transcendent, because even if you can't get there yourself, you can see something fundamentally true in some artworks that's a reminder of that place, and it’s beautiful to feel that again for a lot of people. Some people feel it when their children are born, or when they're overcome by beauty in nature, or maybe when their own death is approaching: they feel this dislodge in the grid of their reality and it’s like a freefall for a second. It’s beautiful to feel it, and I think everyone deep down feels connected to it when they feel that, but it can also be terrifying to actively pursue it on a day-to-day basis, because it's completely at odds with what society tells you is important. 

GV:
Yeah.

LM:
I'm interested in the crossover between other fields, though. I think there's more than we've formally been taught. I think that a lot of the beauty and poetry that comes through anything comes from similar places within humanity. So while I may be more dedicated to it on a time scale very differently than you, I do think you access something very similarly, probably quite often. When I hear you talk about working on a project and walking through your studio and pulling out old miniatures from your design graveyard, what I'm what I'm picking up on and the way I translate that is that you have moments where it's just pure expression, where you feel something and you trust a feeling and you take a leap of faith. You make a decision and you let that decision be a form of truth within your practice. And it's not true, it's not real, it doesn't matter. You just have to trust it, and to me, that is that is a form of facing the unknown, which is very much in line with what I think it means to be an artist. I do think that formally, traditionally, historically, those lines have been drawn much firmer than they needed to be, and part of the whole reason why I'm interested in having these conversations is to play whatever role in attempting to recast that in some way. It’s really beautiful to hear you speak about these things. 

GV:
It’s true. It put you on a path, but there's always this idea, right? Like, I knew I had to come at it from a different angle. Architecture and the training (or whatever you want to call that experience) got me to where I am. It’s partly the resistance of all the things that I've been working against in my training, and building a practice that is not built against that, but is in relationship to it. That’s probably getting at some of these ideas that you're mentioning now. There’s something else there that I'm looking for. There isn't one path towards it, but you're circling, you’re getting closer and closer and closer, and it gets easier. Time is great in that way.

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