Revolutionary: Studio-Tag Is a One-Stop Shop for Commercial Interiors

J. Michael Welton writes about architecture, art and design for national and international publications. He is the author of Drawing from Practice: Architects and the Meaning of Freehand (Routledge, 2015).

When Studio-Tag opened in the Plant Building near New York City’s Times Square in April, it introduced a concept for commercial interiors as revolutionary as the tunes that John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix once recorded there. Studio-Tag is a one-stop shop for contract and hospitality interiors — with glass, lighting, flooring, textiles and furniture all in one place. Before it debuted, those products were scattered across Manhattan, and they were hardly curated. Studio-Tag changed all that inside its new 6,200-square-foot studio and gallery.

All photography by Jeremy Frechette

It’s a diversified environment where designers can see products blended together and work with professionals to arrive at the interior design ensembles they need. “We support architects and designers,” says cofounder Emma Robson. “It’s like a lab where we come up with solutions for design systems.” She and her partners Devon Rausch and John Offerman work with designers to peruse, feel and test offerings from 13 European manufacturers, each handpicked by Robson. Some of these include Hay, Johanson, Slalom, Polarmoss, Pedrali, Framery, Greenwall and Tagwall architectural glass and systems.

Robson’s a world traveler who’s a fan of Burning Man and who just returned from a trip to Beirut. “I go to seven international design shows every year because architects have no time to visit these shows,” she says. Among them: Maison et Objet Paris, Salone in Milan, London’s 100% Design, the biennial Orgatec in Cologne, Stockholm Furniture Design Show, NeoCon in Chicago and ICFF in New York. But she’s also an experienced, hands-on interior designer. During her 13-year stint with USM Modular Furniture, she modified USM product to fit their specific needs.

The showroom is far from cookie-cutter, instead designed from several points of view and in a way where the partners can forecast where the industry’s going, what the demands on it are and how to meet them. “We designed our space around our philosophies and those that are trending in the work environment,” Robson says. That means looking to the future as well as the present, like any modern revolutionary would.