Louise Café featured in Architectural Digest
This article was originally published on July 9, 2024, in Architectural Digest. Read the full article HERE.
Article Excerpt:
When the Everson Museum of Art decided to redo the café in its Syracuse, New York, home—a 1968 building by I.M. Pei—there was an unusual requirement: The winning proposal would need to incorporate some 4,000 ceramic works from the collection of Louise Rosenfield. The terms of her donation dictated that patrons use the wares, pouring water from a Roberto Lugo pitcher or sipping tea from a Betty Woodman mug.
Enter Milliøns, the Los Angeles–based architecture firm founded by Zeina Koreitem and John May. “It was a radical mandate,” says Koreitem of the brief, which encouraged close collaboration with museum director Elizabeth Dunbar. “We loved it as a cultural experiment.” The couple, who met in 2012 while teaching architecture at the University of Toronto, have always placed research at the core of their practice—whether in their recent exhibition design for Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts or their reflective pavilion at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. “We curate things, we do exhibitions, we do buildings, we also write books,” May says of their interdisciplinary approach, honed under Preston Scott Cohen, AD100 Hall of Famer Toshiko Mori, and (in Koreitem’s case) RCR Arquitectes and Dominique Perrault.
It all came together at Everson, a breakthrough moment for Milliøns, whose current projects include their first monograph, their own climate-adaptive live-work compound in Topanga Canyon, and a gallery in Downtown LA. Developing a holistic approach to the museum’s east wing, the duo conceived two prismatic glass volumes for the atrium that double as display cases while amplifying skylight. Curtains by artist Justin Morin now conceal revamped office space, a research library, and collection storage. Outside, where the concrete façade was cleaned to reveal its pink tint, pavers and planters update the newly opened lower level courtyard. At every stage, Milliøns let history be its guide, ripping out carpet when an archival photograph revealed there had been none and reupholstering original furniture that had sat in storage.
At Everson’s Louise café, helmed by restaurateur Danielle Mercuri Campolito, diners gather around custom-designed tables that can be grouped in various configurations. “They allow people to toggle between individual, semicommunal, and communal experiences,” says Koreitem, citing ceramics as a social tool. But no matter which seat visitors choose, the view is a million times better.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner]
