Design Miami Gets Cheesy With Dean & DeLuca

If you plan to head to the Design Miami fair this weekend, you're in for more than squared-off furniture, a futuristic car, and millions of dollars' worth of timepieces. That’s because New York's Charlap Hyman & Herrero, an architecture and interior design firm, teamed up with Dean & DeLuca to look at a more delicious side of contemporary design.

“It’s a one-time thing,” says interior designer Adam Charlap Hyman. “We just designed this to be sort of a surrealist take on the classic Dean & DeLuca store in New York. The reason that we did it with cheese is that the very first Dean & DeLuca was called the Cheese Store. It was this seminal moment in avant-garde grocery-shopping experience because it was the sort of like first really amazing grocery boutique in New York, this cheese store in SoHo. It’s an homage to the cheese store.”


The Dean & DeLuca installation is made up of mirrors, marble, and some rather large wheels of Gruyère cheese. Although the tent where Design Miami is held is fully air conditioned, the odor of the funky cheese is still quite noticeable. The mouth-watering work looks right at home amid Fendi and Swarovski, just across from the tent’s main concession area.

“I guess that Design MIami presents all the categories of the home and of your day-to-day life. You know, the best of each one,” Hyman says. “Conceptually, sort of, food falls into that, and Dean & DeLuca represents the best of food.”


No other culinary inspiration has made its way into the 2015 edition of Design Miami, although there are more than a few dining room tables for those who have the money. Regardless, it’s inspiring to see a fresh take on what design can actually be, an homage not simply to a New York institution but also to the wheels of cheese themselves that artisans have been hand-crafting, much like Persian rugs and fine jewelry, for hundreds of years. Perhaps by Sunday, if you bring some bread, they’ll let you have a taste. 

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