Day to Night, in the City that Never Sleeps

Photos by Putri Trisulo

Thirty-one-year-old Putri Trisulo, founder of Readymade Projects, shares the best in design-centered living, day and night, from the city that never sleeps!

Brief bio, occupation: Founder of Readymade Projects, a platform-neutral agency that offers branding, strategic marketing, curating, and event production services. I also freelance at design studios as a producer/project manager.

Length of time in New York: Almost five years: two on the Lower East Side, and now on my third year in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and loving it.

Eat & Drink

Best Chinese restaurant (hole-in-the-wall):

Chang Wa (formerly Yummy Lotus), 38 Allen Street. New York’s best roast duck on rice.

Best Chinese restaurant (non-hole-in-the-wall):

Chinatown Brasserie, 380 Lafayette Street. Constantly surpasses expectations, and the Peking Duck gets better with every visit. Also a great place for dim sum.

Best sushi:

Marumi, 546 LaGuardia Place. I take sushi seriously, and the daily catch at Marumi is always fresh and affordable.

Matsuri, Maritime Hotel, 363 West 16th Street, and Blue Ribbon Sushi, 119 Sullivan Street. These are all-time favorites for splurging.

Best brunch spot:

Public, 210 Elizabeth Street. Conceived, designed, and run by architectural studio AvroKO, Public is a testament to great design and food in a relaxed, unpretentious shell.

Balthazar, 80 Spring Street. A great way to spend early mornings (opens 7:30 am on weekdays) amongst freshly baked breads.

Best restaurant to go broke at:

Thomas Keller’s Per Se, 10 Columbus Circle. The hype is real and the food will blow your mind.

Favorite cup of Joe:

Brown Café, 61 Hester Street, and Moto, 394 Broadway, Brooklyn. Despite New York’s highly developed culinary and dining scene, a good cup of coffee is sometimes hard to come by. These spots have consistently proper espresso. 

Favorite drinking hole:

Pravda, 281 Lafayette Street. Superior martinis in a great, tucked-away location.

60 Thompson, 60 Thompson Street. This rooftop bar in SoHo is a favorite summer spot. Pricey but private, beautiful, and they serve good cocktails.

Read

The D-Crit Readings Series, launched in anticipation of SVA’s MFA program in Design Criticism (Fall 2008). Listen to the likes of MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli, Pentagram/Design Observer’s Michael Beirut, and New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, for free. Each night explores themes like food, home, evil, and sports in relation to design in the appropriately relaxed atmosphere of the East Village’s KGB Bar.

Shop

Best boutique:

Seven New York, 110 Mercer Street. A fun, thoroughly New York fashion retail experience. One of the first boutiques to bring fashion’s avant garde—Preen, Bernhard Willhelm, Cosmic Wonder and Christian Wijnants—to downtown New York City. Pieces you buy become classics that last longer than you expect.

Dulcinée, 127 Stanton Street. A cozy store on the Lower East Side featuring pieces dating as far back as the 1880s alongside vintage Marimekko, Chloé, Yves Saint Laurent, and Chanel in great condition.

Maison Martin Margiela, 803 Greenwich Street. One of the most clever “concept stores” around, MMM stands at the helm of utilitarian chic in its chalk-white glory. Friendly staff and the full range of the designers’ delectable creations.

Jil Sander, 30 Howard Street. Stark and spectacular. The creative byproduct of the label’s head designer Raf Simons and Dutch artist Germaine Kruip is a sincere testament to longtime bedfellows—fashion and art.

Tokyo 7, 64 East 7th Street, and Ina, 15 Bleecker Street. For out-of-season designer finds. You’ll be surprised at both what you find and the very decent prices.

Favorite art space/gallery/museum:

Neue Gallery for German and Austrian Art, 1048 Fifth Avenue. With our major museums often too packed to enjoy, I like spending the day at this architecturally stunning (and less crowded) museum.

The public art installation “The New York City Waterfalls,” by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, will stretch across four sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Governors Island. Presented by the Public Art Fund, the waterfalls will run from June 26–October 13.

Design storefronts that inspire:

Espasso, 38 North Moore Street. Showcases sexy Brazilian design by the likes of pioneers Oscar Niemeyer and Sergio Rodrigues alongside contemporaries Lia Siqueira and Carlo Motta.

Moss Design, 150 Greene Street. Always a great pit stop to pick up a $2,500 Nymphenburg Wood Grouse the size of your fist, and I love the store’s eclectic range of irreverent figurines unique to Moss’ curatorial vision.

Johnson Trading Gallery, 490 Greenwich Street. One of the very few showrooms dedicated to brave, new commissions from Aranda/Lasch and Steven Holl Architects.

R 20th Century showroom and R Gallery, 82 Franklin Street. Features a magnificent selection of classics and contemporary pieces. This new location was expanded with a proper gallery and dedicated bookstore.

Matter, 405 Broome Street. This one-stop design store sells everything from adult toys and pink pigeons to select super-designer pieces from London’s Established & Sons.

Wyeth, 315 Spring Street. Platners, Millers, and Breuers are nestled amidst tribal sculptures and foot stools; in the showroom’s organized chaos, exquisite form factors collide, blurring epochs, eras, and borders. A refreshing break from the excessively common white cube approach.

Sightsee

Best way to explore New York City:

The best way to experience the city is on a trusty, humble bike.
http://www.joaonewyork.com/ride

For pit stops:
Snack on the grilled corn at Café Habana, 17 Prince Street.
Uncover rare finds at the Annex Antique Fair and Flea Markets, 125 W. 18th Street.
Breeze through the Chelsea galleries and sunbathe at Hudson River Park.

Best touristy thing to do:

The walk over the Brooklyn Bridge on a gorgeous day is worth the hike, as is the 45- minute sojourn up to the top of the Empire State Building.

One reason to get out of the city:

Dia:Beacon (Riggio Galleries), 3 Beekman Street, Beacon, New York. This Hudson Valley location houses a permanent collection of site-specific works by Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt, Dan Flavin, and Andy Warhol, among other 20th-century greats. Peaceful atmosphere in an astounding industrial space (a former Nabisco factory).

Tips

Best neighborhoods to nest in:

For high-end, Tribeca. Industrial, snazzy, and close to Hudson River Park.

East Broadway is a tight, culturally-dynamic spot nestled between a less-rowdy Lower East Side and a more residential Chinatown.

For those who prefer more sky, I’m all for Fort Greene—a quickly-changing neighborhood maintaining a healthy mix of the good and the ugly.