Ian Schrager received his de facto architecture and design education while shaping the interiors and atmospheres of nightclubs such as Studio 54 and Palladium. Since then, he has become known for engaging some of the world’s most adventurous architectural talent. Here, the developer is photographed in his penthouse at 40 Bond Street, the residential building he developed and for which he commissioned Herzog & de Meuron to devise a contemporary homage to New York’s historic cast-iron architecture. Photography by Bolade Banjo for PIN–UP 40.
You might know Ian Schrager as the co-creator, alongside Steve Rubell, of two of the most influential nightclubs in New York history: Studio 54 and Palladium. Or as the pioneer of an entirely new category of hospitality, the boutique hotel — an invention that has secured his design legacy forever. Schrager was the product of law school, not art school. At first, he thought of design simply as a tool to heighten product distinction and increase sales, but this changed with Studio 54. In the brief span of its operation, from 1977 to 1980, the liberating energies of post-Stonewall gay culture intertwined with the rise of a new American celebrity machine. Inside, spectacle, sex, glamour, media, and social life became one circulating system. For Schrager, the club was also something else: a rigorous design education conducted at impossible speed and under maximum pressure. While Rubell worked the door and fueled the hedonism, Schrager shaped atmosphere and effect night after night, anticipating the desires of the world’s most discerning tastemakers. In doing so, he developed a singular design intelligence, a first-hand understanding of how architecture and interiors could drive the entire operation.
The duo also worked on Morgans Hotel (New York, 1984), which saw Schrager make a move that would become central to his method: identifying major foreign creatives just before their authority registered in America. In hiring the French design director Andrée Putman, he was not only borrowing codes from fashion, art, and nightlife, but authoring a new aesthetic order. A year later, he and Rubell opened Palladium, where Schrager commissioned rising Japanese starchitect Arata Isozaki to design the extravagant interior, which was further amplified by commissions from all the era’s biggest art names: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf. Praised by Paul Goldberger in The New York Times as “one of the most remarkable pieces of interior architecture” in the city, Palladium brought Schrager’s public identity into focus. Here was an aesthete with the bravado of a mob boss, a figure who could dream up radical new visions and bend reality to bring them into existence.
By this time he had begun what would prove to be one of his longest-lasting design collaborations, with the French maverick Philippe Starck. Like Putman’s Morgans, Starck’s hotels for Schrager — the Royalton (New York, 1988) or the Delano (Miami, 1995), to name just two — were conceived with such narrative seduction that guests did not simply enter the scene but completed it. Schrager brought that same ethos to his residential projects, like New York’s striking 40 Bond Street (2007), for which he hired the celebrated Swiss duo Herzog & de Meuron. Los Angeles is the setting for Schrager’s current project, a 137-key Sunset Strip hotel designed with John Pawson on the site of the former Standard. Anchored by a 16,000-square-foot landscaped rooftop, it sees him returning to the stage where he first trained — for the hotel’s nightclub, he turned to James Turrell, bringing one of the world’s foremost artists of light into nightlife. PUBLIC West Hollywood opens this spring, just months before Schrager’s 80th birthday.
In the mid-1980s, Schrager and Steve Rubell commissioned Japanese architect Arata Isozaki to transform a 1920s East Village movie palace into the Palladium, their follow-up to Studio 54; the seven-story nightclub was demolished in 1998. Courtesy of Ian Schrager Company.
In 2001, the Ian Schrager Company unveiled the Clift Hotel, a 326-room renovation of a historic San Francisco property. Designed with Philippe Starck, the interiors incorporated works by Charles and Ray Eames, Salvador Dalí, Sebastian Matta, and others. Courtesy of Ian Schrager Company.
Michael Bullock: It’s interesting to me to think of Studio 54 as your design school, a living experiment in spectacle and crowd pleasing. You seem to have a real talent for collaboration, bringing out the best in whoever you work with. You even said of Steve Rubell that you almost had a marriage with him.
Ian Schrager: Working with Steve was a magical experience for me. We were really great friends. We loved each other. It’s funny because we were both raised and born in Brooklyn. I suppose we both felt we had something to prove. As kids, we lived very close to each other, but because he was in a different school district, I didn’t know him. I went up to Syracuse when he was studying there. I was a freshman and he was a senior. We were vying for the attention of the same girl, and I think because we both dealt with each other in a very respectful way about it, we became good friends. It was almost instant. I think sometimes that happens when there’s a fundamental sharing of values and purpose in life. We were both very ambitious and sensitive. I was very sensitive. Steve was an extrovert, and I’m an introvert. I remember that after undergrad he went on to get his master’s in finance to avoid getting drafted in the Vietnam War. I went to law school, not because I wanted to be a lawyer, but because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. When I graduated and started practicing, I became Steve’s lawyer on a 1,000-dollar-a-month retainer. I started getting involved in his steak business.
Did I read somewhere that Rubell invented the all-you-can-eat salad bar?
No. This was when Northeast Airlines was offering free steaks with your flight. There were a number of restaurants offering the self-help salad bar, but Steve’s contribution was that he offered more in his salad bar — more vegetables. We went to his mother’s butcher to get his steaks. It was a real seat-of-the-pants entrepreneurial operation. So we started in the restaurant business.
Studio 54 had previously been a soundstage, and you extended that history by programming it as a kind of participatory theater, where the line between audience and performer was deliberately blurred. It strikes me that the idea of architecture as theater has defined your entire career. How much of the decision to make performance and spectacle so central to Studio 54 was accidental, and how much was intentional?
A lot of accidents, a lot of intention. Like life. You have to remember that the nightclub business was in its early phase of development. The baby-boomer generation graduated college, came back to New York, and wanted to socialize. The first big nightclub was this place called Cheetah, on Broadway and 53rd Street. That period was really the birth of the dance club. There was nothing like it before. In that era, you went to a bar to meet people. There was no dancing, no revelry, except in gay nightclubs, which went from being hidden away to emerging into the open. This was before Paradise Garage, but there was the Flamingo. The energy was so palpable in those clubs — it was infectious. You would have maybe 1,000 people on the dancefloor, moving like one organism — sweaty, dancing with abandon. I never saw anything like it.
Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager inside Studio 54. Courtesy of Ian Schrager Company.
Studio 54. Courtesy of Ian Schrager Company.
Studio 54 invitation from 1977. Courtesy of Ian Schrager Company.
Was Steve out to you before Studio 54 opened?
No.
Was it uncommon in that period for a gay and a straight man to be best friends?
No. It wasn’t uncommon then, not in Manhattan. Most of my friends were gay because the gay people in Manhattan were setting the tone of what was going on culturally, in fashion, music, everything. You can’t exactly figure out why that group of people became so creative and had such an impact on things. Maybe it was because they were just finally spreading their wings. I don’t know.
What I always found so interesting is that, because Steve wasn’t out, he really built a place for himself to feel comfortable.
That’s what everybody does. Every creative person does what they like, and you happen to feel lucky if there are other people out there who also like it. But success is the wind at your back, and you either get expanded by it, and grow, or get destroyed by it. I used to say we got intoxicated by the great success we had, because we didn’t think we could do anything wrong. That’s how we made these really stupid errors, like not paying our income tax. You have to remember, we were just two guys from Brooklyn. With Studio 54, we were trying to get the best people around — the tastemakers, the people in the know. It had nothing to do with wealth. If you had the best people, you had the best club. That split-second spontaneous decision at the front door got a lot of people pissed off. But we wanted people to be able to walk around and feel totally protected. It was part of that freedom that we were trying to get to. A lot of people thought it was un-American to discriminate like that.
Planes of color animate the exterior and interiors of Schrager’s first hotel project outside the United States, the St Martins Lane Hotel in London (1999), also designed by Starck (with Mackay + Partners). Guests could adjust the building’s multicolored lighting effects by remote control from their beds. Courtesy of Ian Schrager Company.
Did you meet the designer Norma Kamali in that period?
Yeah. I’ll never forget the first time I saw her. We wanted her to have a fashion show at Studio because she embodied everything that Studio was about. Although she expresses herself through bold designs, she’s actually very shy. I remember her walking in wearing one of her draped creations. I was transfixed. I’d never seen anything like it before. So I met her at Studio, and we struck up a really deep friendship. Today I consider her my best friend. She’s one of a kind, and still works as hard as ever.
What were you in charge of on a regular night at Studio 54?
Because Steve was an extrovert and I was an introvert, the division of responsibility happened quite naturally. I remember the first night the place opened up, Steve went to deal with the kids at the front door and I went to the DJ to play with the lights. Steve always used to say that he knew when I was playing the lights, because they were right on beat with the music.
How did you develop your gift for atmosphere?
Probably out of necessity. It was instinctive, not business. My parents threw great parties and had great taste. Even though we lived in a modest home, it was always tastefully done — simple. I remember the living room had a gold carpet, gold couch, black furniture, and white walls. I remember they kept looking and looking for the right house to buy because they didn’t want to have to walk through the living room to get to the kitchen. They were very discerning. My father was a great dresser, very fastidious — shirt, cufflinks, the socks, the whole bit. They planned my bar mitzvah so well — it was perfectly over the top — that people would come over to the house and just rave about it even years later. I guess all of that had an impact on me.
And you certainly took that refinement somewhere more ambitious. For the Palladium, you hired Arata Isozaki, already a major international figure in architecture, for what became his first completed American design. At that point, nobody was thinking about a nightclub in those terms. What pushed you to go so far?
I was competing with Studio 54, and Studio 54 was an original idea. Palladium was not. Palladium was just more of it. In order to surpass what we did before, I went to what I considered the best architect in the world, who didn’t speak English by the way. I loved design and architecture. I got into design and architecture because that was my job, that’s what I was doing. I saw Isozaki’s work in a magazine, and I thought it was really great. I’ve always worked with designers from Europe, from Asia, and people thought I was absolutely crazy. Nobody else would hire them. But by definition that was going to give me a fresh look, because they were not the usual suspects.
Ian Schrager photographed by Bolade Banjo for PIN–UP 40.
Ian Schrager photographed by Bolade Banjo for PIN–UP 40.
It was really one of the most stunning nightclubs in history. What was your brief?
He was one of the most brilliant architects, one of the most brilliant people out there. Real world-class talent. I remember calling him in Tokyo from New York, in the middle of the night, because it was 13 hours ahead there. I told him I thought that a nightclub was more about architecture and design than anything else, because you have nothing but the architecture and design. There’s a certain magic to a nightclub. Something comes on, whips the crowd up, and then disappears as fast as it appeared. You can’t stop the party, because then you run the risk of not being able to start it up again. You’ve got what everybody else has — same music, same liquor. There’s no product being sold there other than the architecture and the feeling that it creates. I think that appealed to him. He was a little bit of a rebel himself, so he liked the idea. The original budget was three million. It wound up costing ten million. A week or two after our call, I got two models in the mail. One was round. It functioned like a bull ring. The other was square, like the piazza of a village or city. The square one was more complicated, but he selected it, so we went with it. I was a little bit afraid because when you say a right angle to a contractor here in America, they don’t think it’s really 90 degrees. They think it’s about 90 degrees. No, we want 90 degrees, period. It’s a constant battle for quality with the contractors here. Not so in Europe or Asia.
You also commissioned Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, and Julian Schnabel for the Palladium’s artworks. Haring had had his début solo show at Tony Shafrazi only a couple of years earlier.
I hired Henry Geldzahler, a curator at the Met Museum, as the art advisor. I had to have somebody with credibility, because I was a nightclub guy going to these artists. I didn’t want paintings to hang on the wall. I wanted something immersive that would be part of it. I remembered when the fashion designers were it. Then the rock stars, then the athletes. This was when artists held the Zeitgeist and we thought incorporating and integrating art into the club was something that would give it another dimension. Street credibility.
You were absolutely right, because today what everyone remembers is the Haring mural above the dancefloor.
I think that was one of the best things Keith Haring ever did, by the way. I gave each artist an area. We used Basquiat up in the Michael Todd room [the VIP area], which was an old peeling-paint space with a steel girder running through it.
Rooms at the Palladium club (1985–97) were conceived as distinct environments, many created by artists. The Kenny Scharf room, with its bold colors and cartoonish motifs, transformed the interior into an immersive installation. Photography © Tim Hursley.
Palldium, designed by Arata Isozaki and commissioned by Schrager and Steve Rubell. Photography © Tim Hursley.
A Keith Haring mural hung above the Palladium dancefloor. Photography © Tim Hursley.
In tandem with the Palladium, you were also reinventing the hotel. What made Andrée Putman the right designer for Morgans, your first hospitality venture?
She had incredible taste. I remember reading a story about her in The New York Times. She came from the fashion world, towards which I had a natural affinity. Andrée had worked for Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent, and if there were any certified tastemakers in the world, it was those two. That’s what attracted me.
She wasn’t an obvious pick at that moment, especially in New York.
Definitely not. She’d never done any projects in the U.S. before.
You became a gateway for bringing remarkable European and Asian talent to the United States. Implicit in that was a wager: that there were enough Americans like you who wanted something different. With Morgans, you gave that idea form in what you called the “boutique hotel.” What direction did you give Andrée Putman for the project?
I didn’t want it to look like any hotel that had ever been done before. I wanted to break all the rules. I wasn’t interested in coming up with practical, indestructible finishes that would withstand abuse. I wanted people to feel that they were walking into a private home. For instance, we had solid carpets that would show stains. Okay, so I have to change the carpet a couple times a year, but you’ll make it up in occupancy rate, rather than having an ugly carpet with a pattern that is the stain. It’s a ridiculous decision for a capitalist. You have to assume it makes economic sense because, if it’s not successful, you won’t have a chance to do it again. We didn’t even have a liquor license at that point. We had no food. When people used to order room service, we had to run across the street to the delicatessen, pick up the food, bring it over to the hotel, take it out of the grocery wrapper, put it on a tray, and take it upstairs. But there was an energy to it. You know when you’re involved in something special.
Ian Schrager photographed by Bolade Banjo for PIN–UP 40.
After Morgans, you began one of the longest collaborations of your career, with the French designer Philippe Starck. Together, you developed an extraordinary aesthetic that mixed elegance, Surrealism, and a kind of magic.
Philippe is brilliant. If I ever worked with a genius, it was him. He had a million ideas. And I liked his personality. He’s funny. He enjoys life. Because he’s so undisciplined, I used to get plans from him on toilet paper. I knew I wanted to work with him when I saw the bathroom he did in a Paris restaurant called Café Costes. It was a complete reinvention of how you relieve yourself. There was a see-through glass faucet, so you actually saw the water running before it came down. It was a bathroom that you needed instructions on how to use. It was quirky, original, and theatrical. It made people smile. When people went in, they knew it was a new kind of space. So I thought, “Okay, if he can reinvent the bathroom, he could easily reinvent the hotel room.” From him, I learned to have wit and humor, irony, and irreverence in design. That anything’s possible.
You and Starck developed a signature way of thinking that put the subversion of expectation at its core.
Subversion of the status quo is essential. Make sure you don’t go too far, make sure you don’t put off the customer, but always subvert the status quo. If there’s one thing that runs through every project I’ve done, it’s that.
Among Schrager’s most iconic collaborations with Philippe Starck was the conversion of a landmarked 1947 Art Deco Miami hotel into the Delano Miami Beach. Completed in 1994, the renovation introduced cascades of light-diffusing curtains to the expansive lobby, extending toward an outdoor poolside lounge. Courtesy of Ian Schrager Company.
What about working with Herzog & de Meuron? Your first project with them was 40 Bond Street.
They were really put in a box with that one because the zoning laws didn’t allow them to do anything they wanted — where the shell was concerned, all they could really contribute was the façade. I wanted to do a kind of open living space that Frank Lloyd Wright invented, mostly lofts. I worked with them on the layouts. We decided we’d have no enclosed kitchens — good bathrooms and good kitchens done intelligently. Stylish. Christian Liaigre also worked on the project. And John Pawson. Can you imagine what a trio that is? I felt like a referee.
It almost sounds like the premise of an HDTV show. So what’s next for you? How are you challenging yourself? What’s left to subvert?
I’m doing the new PUBLIC Hotel in West Hollywood on Sunset. It’s very colorful. The rooms are sophisticated, but in a very California way. No clichés. Very light, very airy. The whole roof is almost three-quarters of an acre, and we’re building a park on it, designed by my team with Madison Cox, who’s a great landscape person. I’ve worked with him for a long time. He’s not a corporate landscape person. He’s just a person with great taste who went into landscaping. John Pawson designed the building. He’s worked with me on a number of hotels to varying degrees — he consulted on the EDITIONs. It’s funny, because John Pawson is a minimalist, but I don’t go to him for minimalism. I don’t want anybody to come into a project of mine and be able to label it. I want the simplicity that comes out of minimalism, but I don’t want minimalism. To me, simple is always better.
Will PUBLIC have a night club?
Yes. James Turrell is doing the lighting. There’ll be no blinking lights. It will be completely immersive — the ceiling, walls, floor in this beautiful saturated color. We did blinking lights, then we did moving lights, but it’s different now. We need to keep moving forward.
Ian Schrager photographed by Bolade Banjo for PIN–UP 40.