photographs by Fancy Girl Street Boy (portrait); tom mcgovern (bar area)
Designer David Ashen leads Dash Design, the firm noted for thoughtful, innovative retail projects, which recently transformed a 1960s Howard Johnson hotel in Greenwich into the popular JHouse Hotel and eleven14 restaurant.
Although you grew up wanting to be an architect, you got your undergrad degree in ergonomics. Why did that appeal to you? I liked the mix of design, strategy and psychology—analyzing how people use things and coming up with other ways to get the job done. Why did working for Peter Marino after getting a master’s degree in architecture change your career course? Peter was the top in luxury, and I got into luxury retail. Retail is kind of like set design. It has to captivate people—to be entertaining, enticing, seductive. And I like the timing: It’s got to be done on schedule, and it’s not going to be there that long, maybe five years. How did you develop your interest in branding? I was looking for a firm that merged the different disciplines of design—strategy, architecture and graphic design. At Desgrippes Gobé, I started to understand that a brand brings something to mind. It brings up memories, temptations. I wanted to find the essence of what connects people to a product and then translate that into an environment. Why do you avoid projecting a signature style? It’s not about me; it is about making people feel special. There has to be something that people feel when they enter a space we’ve worked on; it has to create a memory of something special about the experience. Your goals are both to elevate the brand and delight the customer. How does that work at JHouse? The client wanted to create a destination with the restaurant as the driving force. So we designed a place where people in Greenwich can hang out and feel comfortable. How did you make the spaces appropriate for Greenwich? Stereotypically the locale is conservative and traditional, so we used classic elements but updated them—a traditional club chair covered in metallic leather, fireplaces for a sense of warmth and comfort, but raised hearths that are modern and sleek. JHouse’s open-air bar is a great hit. Why do you call it “indoors outdoors”? Using patio furniture would have been expected, so we created water-safe Chesterfields and sectional sofas that could be used outside. I love the way that wasted space between two parts of the building has become a courtyard where people love to hang out. You developed Godiva’s global retail concept. Now you’ve installed a Chocolate Laboratory in JHouse. What is it about you and chocolate? I’ve also worked with Mars and with a candy store in Rye. And I live in a building in Brooklyn that used to be a chocolate factory. I guess there must be some energy for me around chocolate.