Principal, Roger Cardinal Design, New York

 

Roger Cardinal Design performs architectural, landscape, furniture and interior design services for both residential and institutional clients.  Combining traditional and modernist training in the design process is a trademark of the firm.  Clients may take advantage of the firm’s expertise in fine art and antiques through collections management and art advisory services.  The firm has worked privately and discreetly for many high-profile clients in New York City and elsewhere.  

 

Roger Cardinal has been a Designer since 1991.  After receiving his Masters of Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, he worked with the firm of Kallmann, McKinnell & Wood Architects in Boston.  His corporate projects have included the offices of Allen & Co., Inc., Lear Publishing, and City Center, New York City.  Private residential projects have included The Penthouse at the Carlyle Hotel, The Ritz Tower Apartment, The 70th Street Townhouse, The 81st Street Townhouse, The 711 Fifth Avenue Apartment, the Bovina Barn renovation, and the Frances Lear and Herbert Allen Jr. Houses on Gin Lane in Southampton, New York. ~ Roger Cardinal has privately placed works of art by Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Georgia O’Keeffe, David Hockney, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko, among others.  He currently serves as architectural consultant to Governor Kajiwara, Gifu Prefecture, Japan and has lectured throughout Japan on Architecture and Design.  Mr. Cardinal has also been a visiting critic at the Rhode Island School of Design and Syracuse University, New York.

 

There are many Indias… We can base our design process on a celebration of these many Indias.  All the convergent influences of the world run through the country.  Pluralism is India’s greatest strength. This pluralism can be the basis of a design process that embraces and encourages the divergent energies of India. This freewheeling, rambunctious, flourishing India needs to be designed for. Designers can help guide, liberate and fulfill the creative energies of India’s people. Designers must embrace all avenues that are open where anything is possible. This open horizon of possibility is what makes India so attractive to the designer. The beauty of a country with many design traditions can teach us so much. Good design can continue to help to unshackle the creative energies of India’s notoriously entrepreneurial people.  As designers we can be inspired and influenced by this diversity. There is no single standard, no fixed stereotype, no one way to design in India. The broad, basic rules are perhaps set, but within this framework, the designer is free to improvise, wonderfully unshackled by a preconceived score. The muscularity of a multi-party democracy can be nurtured by good design.

 

It has been said that within the popular culture of present day India there are no buildings, no monuments, and no architectural icons that are as powerful as the shadow of the presence of teaming humanity. There are those who bemoan the failure of architecture and urban design to solve the problems of so many. But, it is exactly this human element that should be applauded and used as the basis of design. Design in India cannot stand apart from the overreaching shadow of the human. This pluralistic humanity is both the cause of so many problems and the inspiration for finding the answer to so many of the questions. This pluralism emerged out of the very nature of the country given its extraordinary mixture of ethnic groups, mutually incomprehensible languages, the variety of topography and climate, the diversity of religions and cultural practices, and the wide range of economic development. What a laboratory for a NEW WORLD OF DESIGN! India can become the magnet for those who are looking to help create a future vision of what we on this planet are capable of.  What a crucible of innovation for the design community!

We can embrace the contradictions of India. We must embrace India as a product of diversity that is based on a national principle of variety. The geographic, social and ethnic diversity of India does not permit a single, exclusionist nationalism, nor does this diversity permit a simple design sensibility. This is a country crying out for innovative and expansive design solutions.  

 

Design can be the basis to help a pluralistic culture that is being held together very tenuously. Design can help to hold together this country that is seen by so many people as a blueprint for the future of so much of our planet. What does it mean to be designing within a state that is so multi-cultural and so divergent?  We know that design can help everybody. We believe that so much that we all want to know what we can do to help to usher in a glorious future.  We can develop trends to design with empathy for all. We can design for people who know that they want to improve their lives. Design can help everyone.