Boym Partners

Boym Partners is an American design firm, based in New York City.

Boym Partners, Inc.

Industry	Design
Founded	1986 (38 years ago) (1986)
Founder	Constantin Boym
Headquarters	New York City, New York, U.S.
Key people	Constantin Boym Laurene Leon Boym
Website	www.boym.com

History

Boym Partners was founded in 1986 by Constantin Boym in New York City and is run by Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym, who joined the firm in 1995.^[1] The firm is a multi-disciplinary design studio.^[2] The firm designs products and environments for its clients, in addition to creating self-produced artistic works.^[3] The firm has designed tableware for companies including Authentics and Alessi, as well as watches for Swatch,^[4] lighting for Flos, and showrooms for Vitra.^[5]

Souvenirs

The company has also designed collectible objects. In 1997 it began producing a line called Souvenirs for the End of the Century, which marked iconic events from the 20th-century.^[6] It also produced the Buildings of Disaster project—a series of architectural miniature souvenirs depicting buildings that were the site of a historical disaster. Objects created included the Unabomber's cabin, the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Chernobyl,^[7] and the Lorraine Motel.^[8] After 9-11, the company added more items to the line, including The Pentagon and the World Trade Center.^[9] Following the 2007–2008 financial crisis, Boym Partners produced a line of replicas based upon skyscrapers that were not built due to the crash.^[10]

The projects developed by Boym Partners between 1985 and 2002 were the focus of the 2002 Princeton Architecture Press book Curious Boym: Design Works.^[11] In 2009, Boym Partners received the National Design Award in the Product Design category.^[12] A monograph about the firm's history and work, Keepsakes: A Design Memoir, was also published by Pointed Leaf Press in 2015.^[13]

Museums

Projects developed by the company are housed in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.^[14][15] Boym-designed exhibitions have also been shown in the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.^[4] Boym Partners also designed the souvenir renderings of the Cooper-Hewitt's mansion home, using emoticons in the design.^[16] In 2009, its exhibition Timeless Objects, in which it coated everyday objects with bronze-like material to give them an artistic feel, was shown at the ExperimentaDesign in Lisbon, the Wright Gallery in Chicago, and the Cooper-Hewitt.^[17]

References

1. "Design Entrepreneurs: Laurene Leon Boym". Core77.
2. English, Darby (February 26, 2019). To Describe a Life: Notes from the Intersection of Art and Race Terror. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300230383 – via Google Books.
3. Stahl, Julie Müller (October 3, 2005). Dish: International Design for the Home. Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 9781568984766 – via Google Books.
4. Heller, Steven (April 2, 2006). The Education of a Design Entrepreneur. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9781621532064 – via Google Books.
5. "Constantin Boym named head of industrial design at Pratt". Dezeen. May 27, 2015.
6. "Will Wiles on design reclaiming the souvenir". Dezeen. July 30, 2015.
7. Tharp, Bruce M.; Tharp, Stephanie M. (February 12, 2019). Discursive Design: Critical, Speculative, and Alternative Things. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262038980 – via Google Books.
8. English, Darby (February 26, 2019). To Describe a Life: Notes from the Intersection of Art and Race Terror. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300230383 – via Google Books.
9. Silverberg, Michael. "Some 9/11 souvenirs that would be better than a cheese plate". Quartz.
10. Vanderbilt, Tom (April 28, 2011). "The Greatest Buildings Never Built" – via www.wsj.com.
11. Jacobson, Clare; Wilker, Jan (September 3, 2003). Karlssonwilker Inc.'s Tellmewhy: The First 24 Months of a New York Design Company. Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 9781568984162 – via Google Books.
12. Kuang, Cliff (April 30, 2009). "2009 National Design Award Winners: A Whirlwind Tour". Fast Company.
13. Boym, Constantin (October 3, 2015). Keepsakes: A Design Memoir. Pointed Leaf Press. ISBN 9781938461255 – via Google Books.
14. "Constantin Boym and Laurene Leon Boym · SFMOMA". www.sfmoma.org.
15. "Constantin Boym, Laurene Leon Boym. Use It Containers. 1995 | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art.
16. Lange, Alexandra (December 12, 2014). "The New Cooper Hewitt" – via www.newyorker.com.
17. "Timeless Objects by Boym Partners". Dezeen. July 22, 2009.