The craic is real in the Brooklyn home of Orior’s creative director
When Ciarán McGuigan first visited his prospective Brooklyn apartment, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. ‘I banged my head on the way up,’ he says, referring to the low ceilings in the building’s stairwell. The unit was a fixer-upper for sure, but McGuigan, the founder and CEO of The Malin, a coworking space with multiple New York locations, and the creative director of Northern Irish furniture brand Orior, wasn’t one to shy away from a challenge.
A few toppled walls and torn-down ceilings later, the space now functions as an open, airy entertainment hub for McGuigan, his wife, Logann, and their visiting friends and family from the Emerald Isle.
When the couple purchased the apartment, which is located in a 1930s-era building, it was sectioned off into four or five small rooms. Naturally, that warren-like floorplan didn’t last long.
‘We knew we wanted to have as much big, open space as possible,’ adds McGuigan, who maximised the square footage with an open-plan dining room, living room and kitchen, plus an adjoining sky-lit bedroom.
No surprise, McGuigan’s home borrows from the old-meets-new aesthetic he’s honed at Orior. The brand, which was founded by his parents, Brian and Rose McGuigan, in 1979, creates furnishings that manage to feel retro and familiar (think puffy, mustard yellow chairs and velvet blue sofas with fringe) without feeling too played out.
The apartment — which was helmed by his college friend and Orior’s head of design, Jean Morana — also kick-started some of the brand’s big ideas.
‘The Wavy credenza, which is one of our go-to pieces at the moment, was originally designed for this space,’ says McGuigan. ‘After living with it for a while, we thought we should just prototype it and launch it.’ Marmar, a hefty stone table available in a minty green Irish marble — a brand signature — also originated as a one-off piece for the living room.
When it came to selecting furniture and accessories outside of the Orior catalog, McGuigan pulled from a list of longtime design obsessions. First was Bocci, whose meandering glass chandelier adds an organic touch to the colourful living area.
Next were pendant lamps by designer Seungjin Yang, which are made of resin-encased party balloons, incorporating a bit of whimsy into the kitchen’s otherwise brass, oak and stone material palette. McGuigan’s art collection, meanwhile, includes works by Andrew Humke — another college buddy — and Lou Ros.
Installing everything, like the design itself, was a group effort. McGuigan recalls needing a ‘teleporter’ (Irish-English for ‘forklift’) to transport some of the bulkier pieces from the street — a potentially painful, tedious process had it not been for the great craic from the many friends who helped.
‘We were lifting the marble for the kitchen counter, and one of the young lads just goes, “Jesus, this weighs more than my granny’s funeral casket’’,’ he recalls. ‘His grandmother was 92 when she passed, so it was a celebration of life, you know — and she was a big lady. We all just burst out laughing.’
Those anecdotes, as well as the many memories embedded in the first-batch Orior pieces, are key for McGuigan. ‘That’s part of the space,’ he says. ‘I come in here and I see a lot of great conversations... and a lot of great stories.’
It’s evident in the ways he speaks about his collaborators, like vintage dealer Killian McNulty, who has four or five warehouses in the middle of the Irish countryside, each housing an ‘unbelievable collection’ that McGuigan pulled from.
Like Orior’s designs, the loft is a constant work in progress. There are a few pieces, like a glass sculpture, that have been moved ‘here, there, and everywhere’ since moving in, and others, like an artwork from a friend in Ireland, that still need to be placed. ‘We’re still, as my wife says, “nesting’’,’ McGuigan adds. ‘It takes time.’
