Iain Halliday’s design guide to New York City

Iain Halliday is a director of leading interior design and architecture firm Burley Katon Halliday. He’s the designer behind some of Sydney’s hottest restaurant interiors, hotels, bars and a slew of luxury homes. The firm has offices in Sydney and New York, and Halliday also has an apartment in Manhattan’s Midtown.

Here are his top five places every design lover should visit while in the Big Apple.

Bryant Park

This park in the middle of the city, set behind the main branch of the New York Public Library, is such an amazing, lush respite from the bustle of Midtown. The park is 3.8 hectares and in a classic design of a central lawn with formal pathways and stone balustrades. It’s busy most of the day, but it’s always a good place to just sit and immerse yourself in the buzz of the city.

42nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues

The simple and elegant park was built on the site of the former Stork Club and opened in 1967.

40 Bond

I’m obsessed with this Herzog & de Meuron building in NoHo with its beautiful cast glass façade. It’s an apartment building that takes up five typical New York lots, with five townhouses at street level and the apartment building stacked above. The townhouses are a reminder of the scale of the original lots and are separated from the street with a cast aluminium grille, the design of which is a collage of graffiti tags. It also has an extraordinary entrance lobby.

40 Bond Street

Paley Park

This is a small jewel in the depths of Midtown. The simple and elegant park was built on the site of the former Stork Club and opened in 1967. A privately owned public space that was financed by Willia S Paley in memory of his father, Samuel, the tranquil garden features a wall of water at one end and is filled with tables by Eero Saarinen and chairs by Harry Bertoia.

3-5 East 53rd Street between Madison Avenue and 5th Avenue

Situated underneath the Rockefeller Center’s Atlas statue is this distinctive green coffee truck serving some of the best coffee in the city.

Seagram Building

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson’s timeless skyscraper was built in the International style and epitomises the guiding principles and elegance of Modernism. Mies’ big gesture was to set the building 30 metres back from the street edge, thereby creating an open and active plaza. The plaza also creates a grand procession to the entrance. The Seagram Building’s Pool Room restaurant has been restored by architect Annabelle Selldorf and reopened to diners in 2016.

375 Park Avenue

Ralph’s Coffee Truck

Situated underneath the Rockefeller Center’s Atlas statue is this distinctive green coffee truck serving some of the best coffee in the city. The custom-built Citroën trucks are an offshoot of Ralph Lauren’s Ralph’s Coffee chain (there’s one at the brand’s 5th Avenue boutique and another at its Madison Avenue location). It’s a great Midtown location to relax and enjoy a coffee.

630 5th Avenue