Soon after, Aujla and Bloomstein started designing apartments for their friends. Instead of using off-the-shelf fixtures and finishings, they doubled down on their radically artisanal world-building project, which they execute by
hand. Thus, on cabinets in the GRP realm, you'll encounter the humble piano hinge. With this mechanism, Bloomstein says, “there's this tactile thing—the door drags on the way out. It's actually not that good by a cabinetmaker's standards, but it makes you automatically recall your experiences in older houses, rather than the present, where everything works really well.”
Over the past few years, Green River Project has designed some of the most alluring spots in NYC, including the restaurant Dr. Clark and the Bode retail store, both of which have become ports of call for downtowners seeking refuge from the scourge of chic minimalism. “I've never seen a vision like theirs,” says 26-year-old fashion and fine-art photographer Tyler Mitchell, who hired GRP to renovate his new photo studio. “I feel like young people today have been sold the concept of the white box. But Green River is a total rejection of this Sex and the City apartment aesthetic, and it's encouraging people to fill their home with rich material and rich history.”
New York has plenty of beautiful Japanese restaurants, but few are as unusual and captivating as Dr. Clark, which opened at the height of the city's pandemic spring and fast became the scene-iest hang below Delancey Street. “It's about not seeing materials that bring you back to today,” says Aujla. There isn't a shred of white in the place: The walls are paneled with coffee-stained lauan, the furniture custom-built from Douglas fir and upholstered in dusty velvet. The lighting—provided by sculptural sconces made in GRP's upstate metal studio—is impossibly flattering.