Rafael Prieto Turns Tribeca Facade Cast-Offs Into Furniture

Designer Rafael Prieto has built a furniture collection from sixteen salvaged fragments of an early twentieth-century Tribeca facade, now on view at Emma Scully Gallery in New York City.

The pieces came from a renovation across the street from Prieto's New York studio. According to his team, Prieto "became deeply interested" in the ornamental stone during the project and arranged to have the cast-offs preserved rather than discarded.

He did not touch them for a year. Instead, he kept the fragments in his studio, weighing their "history, meaning, and potential" and their connection to the city. "For Prieto, the fragments became a way of thinking about New York itself," said the team.

The exhibition, titled The Future of the Past, splits the resulting collection into two approaches. Four tables incorporate the actual architectural pieces, including a chunk of a cornice. Other objects, among them a bright red chair, translate lines and motifs abstracted from the discarded building elements into new forms.

Around the historic stone, Prieto worked in contemporary colours and materials: lacquered birch painted in deep purple, black and red, plus exposed-burl veneer. The Red Birch and Stone Table typifies the method. It stands on two mismatched legs — one an architectural corbel, one bright red striated birch — beneath a birch top finished in burl veneer.

The collection also includes chairs with notched armrests that recall architectural ornamentation, a stool with a fragment wedged at its centre, and a low-lying burl veneer chair with red geometric arm supports.

The material tension is deliberate. "The dichotomy between these materials – the hard and the soft, the historic and the contemporary – runs throughout the collection," said the team.

The show occupies a small room at Emma Scully Gallery on the Upper East Side. Prieto designed the surrounding wallpaper together with Wallpaper Projects, and it features his own photography. Clement Pascal shot the exhibition images.

Prieto is originally from Mexico and divides his time between New York and Mexico City, where he runs the marketing studio Savvy. He also founded a chocolate company, Casa Bosques.

His approach follows a broader pattern among New York designers who translate their experience of the city into objects. Recent examples include a chair by Italian designer Massimiliano Malagò reflecting on why he keeps returning to New York, and delicate lamps by Bechara Maalouf made from wood scraps salvaged from old building beams.

The Future of the Past runs at Emma Scully Gallery from 30 September to 12 December, offering a compact case for treating demolition debris as design material rather than waste.