VOL. CLXIII . . . No. 56,621 + © 2014 The New York Times NEW YORK, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

Late EditionToday, clouds and sun, a heavy late-day storm, high 84. Tonight, anevening thunderstorm, showers,low 64. Tomorrow, clouds and sun,high 76. Weather map, Page A24.

$2.50

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By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — PresidentObama on Wednesday author-ized a major expansion of the mil-itary campaign against rampag-ing Sunni militants in the MiddleEast, including American air-strikes in Syria and the deploy-ment of 475 more military advis-ers to Iraq. But he sought to dis-pel fears that the United Stateswas embarking on a repeat of thewars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a speech to the nation fromthe State Floor of the WhiteHouse, Mr. Obama said the Unit-ed States was recruiting a globalcoalition to “degrade and ulti-mately destroy” the militants,known as the Islamic State inIraq and Syria. He warned that“eradicating a cancer” like ISISwas a long-term challenge thatwould put some American troopsat risk.

“We will hunt down terroristswho threaten our country, wher-ever they are,” Mr. Obama de-clared in a 14-minute address.“That means I will not hesitate totake action against ISIL in Syria,as well as Iraq,” he added, usingan alternative name for ISIS.“This is a core principle of mypresidency: If you threatenAmerica, you will find no safe ha-ven.”

The president drew a distinc-tion between the military actionhe was ordering and the twowars begun by his predecessor,George W. Bush. He likened thiscampaign to the selective air-strikes that the United States hascarried out for years against sus-pected terrorists in Yemen andSomalia, few of which have beenmade public.

After enduring harsh criticismfor saying two weeks ago that hedid not have a strategy for deal-ing with ISIS in Syria, Mr. Obama

outlined a plan that will bolsterAmerican training and arming ofmoderate Syrian rebels to fightthe militants. Saudi Arabia hasagreed to provide bases for thetraining of those forces.

Mr. Obama called on Congressto authorize the plan to train andequip the rebels — something theCentral Intelligence Agency hasbeen doing covertly and on amuch smaller scale — but he as-serted his authority as command-er in chief to expand the overallcampaign, which will bring thenumber of American troops inIraq to 1,600.

“These American forces willnot have a combat mission; wewill not get dragged into anotherground war in Iraq,” Mr. Obamapledged, adding that the mission“will be different from the wars inIraq and Afghanistan; it will notinvolve American combat troopsfighting on foreign soil.”

For all of Mr. Obama’s effortsto reassure the public, his re-marks were a stark acknowledg-ment of the threat posed by themilitants, whose lightning ad-vance through Iraq and Syria andvideotaped beheading of twoAmerican journalists have re-ignited fears of radical Islamicterrorism.

There is no evidence that ISISis plotting an attack on the UnitedStates, Mr. Obama said. But headded, “If left unchecked, theseterrorists could pose a growingthreat” to Americans because offoreign fighters, including somefrom the United States, who havetraveled to Syria and Iraq andwho could return home to carryout attacks.

Standing just outside the BlueRoom, steps from where he an-nounced the raid that killed Osa-

Will Send 475 More Advisers to Iraq and Mount Attacks on ISIS in Syria

POOL PHOTO BY SAUL LOEB

President Obama said Wednesday that the United States and a coalition of allies would destroy ISIS in an effort requiring years.

Continued on Page A8

By KATRIN BENNHOLD

STEENOKKERZEEL, Belgium— For Kurt Ryon, the mayor ofSteenokkerzeel, a Flemish village10 miles northeast of Brussels,watching the Scottish independ-ence campaign in the final daysbefore the referendum is likewatching a good soccer match.“They were losing for the firsthalf and most of the second half,”he said, “but now we’re in the85th minute and they could bewinning.”

Mr. Ryon, who wants his nativeFlanders to split from Belgium, isrooting for Scotland to do thesame from Britain, and like afaithful soccer fan he has all thegear: a T-shirt from the Scottishpro-independence “yes” cam-paign, a collection of “yes” pinson his denim jacket and copiousamounts of a beer speciallybrewed by Flemish nationaliststo express their solidarity. The la-bel says “Ja!” next to a Scottishflag, Flemish for yes.

From Catalonia to Kurdistan toQuebec, nationalist and separat-ist movements in Europe and be-yond are watching the Scottishindependence referendum close-ly — sometimes more so thanBritons themselves, who seem tohave only just woken up to the

From KurdistanTo Texas, ScotsSpur Separatists

Continued on Page A12

By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — In orderinga sustained military campaignagainst Islamic extremists inSyria and Iraq, President Obamaon Wednesday night effectivelyset a new course for the remain-der of his presidency and mayhave ensured that he would passhis successor a volatile and in-complete war, much as his prede-cessor left one for him.

It will be a significantly differ-ent kind of war — not like Iraq orAfghanistan, where many tens ofthousands of American troopswere still deployed when Mr.Obama took the oath nearly sixyears ago. And even though Mr.Obama compared it to the small-scale, sporadic strikes againstisolated terrorists in places likeYemen and Somalia, it will not beexactly like those either.

Instead, the widening battlewith the Islamic State in Iraq andSyria will be the next chapter in agrueling, generational strugglethat has kept the United States atwar in one form or another sincethat day 13 years ago on Thurs-day when hijacked airplanesshattered America’s sense of itsown security. Waged by a presi-dent with faded public standing,the new phase will not involvemany American troops on theground, but seems certain to re-quire a far more intense Ameri-can bombing blitz than in Soma-lia or Yemen.

The battleground for that newphase will now extend beyondthe well-known sands of Iraq intothe new theater of Syria, a nationracked by more than three years

Extending a Legacy of WarNEWS ANALYSIS

Continued on Page A10

This article is by Mark Mazzet-ti, Eric Schmitt and Mark Land-ler.

WASHINGTON — The violentambitions of the Islamic State inIraq and Syria have been con-demned across the world: in Eu-rope and the Middle East, bySunni nations and Shiite ones,and by sworn enemies like Israeland Iran. Pope Francis joined thecall for ISIS to be stopped.

But as President Obama pre-pares to send the United Stateson what could be a yearslong mil-itary campaign against the mil-itant group, American intelli-gence agencies have concludedthat it poses no immediate threatto the United States. Some offi-cials and terrorism experts be-lieve that the actual dangerposed by ISIS has been distorted

in hours of television punditryand alarmist statements by poli-ticians, and that there has beenlittle substantive public debateabout the unintended conse-quences of expanding Americanmilitary action in the MiddleEast.

Daniel Benjamin, who servedas the State Department’s topcounterterrorism adviser duringMr. Obama’s first term, said thepublic discussion about the ISISthreat has been a “farce,” with“members of the cabinet and topmilitary officers all over the placedescribing the threat in luridterms that are not justified.”

“It’s hard to imagine a betterindication of the ability of electedofficials and TV talking heads tospin the public into a panic, withclaims that the nation is hon-

Struggling to Gauge Threat,Even as U.S. Prepares to Act

Continued on Page A8

By NICK WINGFIELD

Parents like Minecraft becauseit can be a creative outlet for theirchildren. Teachers like the gamebecause it can bring lessons tolife. And Microsoft likes the gameso much that the tech giant wantsto buy Minecraft’s parent compa-ny for more than $2 billion.

It is not flashy graphics or anintricate story line luring thesegroups to the game, however.Minecraft has become a globalphenomenon by breaking withthose usual conventions.

The point of the game is build-ing things — and tens of millionsof people spend hours construct-ing elaborate structures withdigital pickaxes and other tools— and helping others make theirown creations.

The popularity of the game hasbeen clear for a couple of years.But the possible deal with Micro-soft is the clearest sign yet howimportant tech giants viewgames like Minecraft and theirgrowing fan bases. Already,Facebook bought a virtual realityheadset maker for $2 billion andthe Japanese company SoftBankspent $1.5 billion for a stake in amobile game developer. Lastmonth, Amazon agreed to buyTwitch, a streaming video site,

In Hit Games,Tech Giants SeeMore Than Fun

Continued on Page B2

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

ALBANY — Twenty storiesabove ground zero, its existenceand whereabouts known only tothose who needed it, the FamilyRoom served for a dozen years asa most private sanctuary from amost public horror.

It was spartan office space at a54-story tower at 1 Liberty Plazafor families to be by themselves,a temporary haven where theycould find respite from badweather and the curious stares ofpassers-by. Piece by piece, with-out any planning, it was trans-formed into an elaborate shrineknown only to them.

Unconstrained and unde-signed, a profusion of intimateexpressions of love and loss filledthe walls of the room, the table-tops, the floors and, even, thewindows, obscuring views of theWorld Trade Center site below, asif to say: Jim and John and Jona-than and Harvey and Gary andJean and Welles and Isaias andKatherine and Christian andJudy are all here, with us, notdown there in the ruins.

“What tower? What floor?That was the way other peoplesaw our loved ones,” said NikkiStern, whose husband, James E.Potorti, was among those killedon Sept. 11, 2001. “It was ada-mantly not how we wanted to de-fine our loved ones. The FamilyRoom was the beginning of the

storytelling that was controlledby the families.”

And it was that rare thing atground zero, a secret refuge hid-den in plain sight of the workers,shoppers, neighbors and visitorswho streamed past the buildingevery day. It was not meant to bea public memorial and was littleknown until today.

This week, 150 miles north of

ground zero, the Family Room —and a thousand stories of loveand loss — has opened to thepublic for the first time, in an ex-hibition at the New York StateMuseum in Albany. The displayspeaks of the personal commun-ion between the victims’ relativesand those who were killed 13years ago, when terrorists tookdown the twin towers.

The Family Room opened inApril 2002 in space donated byBrookfield Office Properties, theowners of 1 Liberty Plaza, acrossChurch Street from the trade cen-ter site. By presenting what wasknown as a medical examiner’sfamily identification card, vic-tims’ relatives were admittedduring regular workdays and at

A 9/11 Shrine Where Families Mourned, Now Open to Others

NATHANIEL BROOKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A memento given to the Family Room, which opened in 2002 in a building opposite ground zero.

BUILDING BLOCKS

Continued on Page A22

SAUDIS AS HOSTS Saudi Arabia will provide bases for the training ofmoderate Syrian opposition fighters, U.S. officials said. PAGE A10

OVERCOMING MISTRUST The wariness that Iraq’s Sunnis feel towardShiites is a fundamental challenge facing the new government. PAGE A9

Gail Collins PAGE A27

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

On “Songs of Innocence,” U2 honors itsinfluences (Joey Ramone, Joe Strum-mer) and mines its history for inspira-tion. A review by Jon Pareles. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-8

U2 Connects to the Past

Several nations were called lax in re-turning art looted from Jews. PAGE C1

Long Wait for Restitution

Chamber, a Chelsea gallery that opensnext week, is just the latest example ofthe new Dutch design invasion of Man-hattan. Above, a fanciful bronze chande-lier created by Frederik Molenschot fora condominium lobby. PAGE D1

HOME D1-8

The Dutch Are Back In July, Carolina Herrera, above, gazedat a picture and said, “That tulip.” Sev-eral weeks later, the pinks, blues, pur-ples and yellows of tulips materializedin her show at New York Fashion Week.A look at how they got there. PAGE E1

THURSDAY STYLES E1-18

All This for a 12-Minute Show

The Internet giant is bringing e-com-merce into the homes of China’s rapidlyexpanding middle class. PAGE B1

BUSINESS DAY B1-11

The Long Arms of Alibaba

Andrew M. Cuomo brushed off talk of arebuke, and Rob Astorino said he wasprepared for November. PAGE A19

NEW YORK A19-23

Rivals Assess Governor’s Race

A former F.B.I. director is asked to con-sider the handling of Ray Rice. PAGE B13

SPORTSTHURSDAY B13-19

N.F.L. Seeks Inquiry on Itself

For the first time since the Fukushimadisaster, Japan’s new nuclear regula-tory agency said that a nuclear powerplant was safe to operate. PAGE A6

Japan Approves Nuclear Plant

An engineer suspected in the deaths ofhis five children led a life filled with be-trayal, anxiety and mistrust. PAGE A15

NATIONAL A15-17

A Fractured Life, and 5 Deaths

Israel has begun criminal investigationsinto five instances of possible militarymisconduct in the Gaza war. PAGE A11

INTERNATIONAL A4-14

Misconduct Inquiries by Israel

OBAMA CALLS FOR SUSTAINED DRIVE TO ROUT MILITANTS

INVOKING 9/11 The administration says airstrikes against ISIS arecovered by an existing authorization to use military force. PAGE A10

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By JULIE LASKY

On Sept. 24, in an avant-gardecondo tower that butts upagainst the High Line, an unusualgallery called Chamber will open in Chel-sea. Like a 17th-century cabinet of curios-ities, it will be filled with the eclectic treas-ures of intrepid explorers.

Chamber will sell objects like a walllamp mounted with a pair of nerdy blackspectacles and a sound-diffusing cabinetthat looks like a chaotic pile of raw wood.(The piece has functional drawers, but

how many and where they are takes someguessing.) There will even be a limited-edition perfume distilled exclusively forthe gallery, its scent “based on the experi-ence of a Louis Kahn structure.” (That’sthe news release talking.)

Chamber’s contents may seem offbeat,but they will not be random. They havebeen selected by Studio Job, an atelierbased in Belgium and the Netherlands thatis itself sprinkled with the dust of the Wun-derkammer. Founded in 2000 by JobSmeets and Nynke Tynagel, a marriedcouple, Studio Job has produced furnituredense with Bavarian-folk-themed marque-try, a lamp shaped like a constructioncrane and bronze cat sculptures with eyes

that literally glow. For Chamber, it ac-quired, designed or collaborated withother artists in the production of 100objects. These will be sold at the gal-lery over the next two years. After

that, a new curator will step in with a dif-ferent collection.

Not unexpectedly, given Studio Job’sLow Countries provenance, many of thedesigners contributing to Chamber areDutch. Some, like Mr. Smeets, were mem-

THE DETAILS

CONTINUED ON PAGE D6

And this time their ships are laden witha new generation of thought-provokingobjects and design ideas.

The Dutch Are Back in Town

Clockwise from below: Huys apartmentinterior; CitizenM New York, designedby Concrete; Ghislaine Viñas-designedinterior with Hot Kroon chandelier byPiet Boon; Diffuser cabinet by Dirk Van-der Kooij for Chamber ($13,500); vintageTheo Ruth chair with contemporary fab-ric by Swip Stolk for Chamber ($6,300).

From left: Studio Job’s Spectacle lamp for Chamber($6,100); Frederik Molenschot’s chandelier forHuys; and MAL Furnitureclock for Chamber ($1,500).

Above: A Jakob Smits paintingwith Studio Job frame andMaarten Baas workbench.

LEFT, PAUL BARBERA; ABOVE, ADRIAN GAUT; TOP CENTER, MAARTEN WILLEMSTEIN; BELOW ART GRAY

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2014 D1

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DOMESTIC LIFE DESIGN GARDENING D.I.Y.

2 CURRENTS

Semi-wild swimmingpools and AlexanderMelamid on the pleasures of plumbing.

5 SHOPPING

Why outdoor furniture should beanything but plastic.BY RIMA SUQI

A family craving more space finds it stashed in their own home. Page 4

No Sense ofBoundaries

BRUCE BUCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By BOB TEDESCHI

In the 13 years we’ve owned our home, mywife and I have built three fire pits. Thefirst was a rock ring in the woods, wherewe sat on boulders and invited armies ofmosquitoes to mainline our blood while wepretended not to notice.

The second, in our scrubby side yard insuburban Connecticut, never saw flamebut eventually hosted many interestingspecies of weeds and at least one tree.

Then I invested in bricks and a grate,building a pit 10 yards from our back deck,where it sat unused for two years before Ikicked it down.

What would it take to inspire an out-doorsy family of fire lovers to actually usea fire pit?

Last week, I figured I’d find out. I calledon John Gulland, manager and founder ofWoodheat.org; Scott Cohen, author of“Scott Cohen’s Outdoor Fireplaces and

Fire Pits”; and Julie Moir Messervy, a Ver-mont-based landscape designer and au-thor of eight books on the subject, includ-ing “Landscaping Ideas That Work.”

My landscaping specialists got right tothe heart of it: A successful fire pit is abouta lot more than just the fire.

“The goal is to create a go-to destinationwhere you can chitchat with your friends,”Mr. Cohen said. “Fire just helps prolongthe use of the area.”

In designing the space, Ms. Messervysuggested I start by selecting a propersite. My impulse was to put the pit on theslope behind a patio I installed in June. Thepatio’s retaining wall, I figured, wouldmake a passable bench for the fire pit.

Ms. Messervy felt this would crowd thepatio and, worse still, force me to dig tonsof soil to level the ground. Having dug my-self to the edge of insanity when I wasbuilding the patio, I took her advice andchose a spot on a plateau a few yardsaway. In playing with designs and layouts,I relied on Ms. Messervy’s Home OutsidePalette mobile app, which was useful (andfree).

Next, I checked Houzz.com, which of-

THE PRAGMATIST

BaptismBy Fire PitAfter three failed attempts to buildan outdoor fireplace, the writeremerged from his ordeal warmer,wiser and ready for s’mores.

TONY CENICOLA/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The author’s son and dog wait patiently at thenew fire pit for the marshmallows to arrive.

CONTINUED ON PAGE D8

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D6 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

bers of Droog, the influential Dutch collab-orative known for high-concept objects.Gijs Bakker, for instance, a jewelry de-signer who founded Droog in 1993 withRenny Ramakers, a writer, has produced astippled titanium brooch for the gallerythat represents the moon as it was firstphotographed in 1968 from outer space.

Others whose work will be on displayare graduates of the Design AcademyEindhoven in the Netherlands, which re-mains a training ground for designers inthe Droog mold. (Mr. Smeets and Ms. Tyn-agel met there as students.)

Maarten Baas, for example, made a sen-sation with his 2002 Eindhoven thesisproject: traditional furniture pieces black-ened with a blowtorch. He has returned tohis Smoke series many times since. ForChamber, he crisped a workbench pro-duced by Manufactum, a German compa-ny that is a favorite of the gallery’s 26-

year-old Argentine founder, Juan GarciaMosqueda.

It has been a while since so manythought-provoking Netherlandish designscongregated in a single New York venue.In the mid-1990s, at the SoHo gallery Moss,you could catch your first glimpse of workby Hella Jongerius, Marcel Wanders andJurgen Bey, Droog designers who grewinto superstars. In 1995, the curator PaolaAntonelli installed pieces by Tejo Remy,Joep van Lieshout and other contempo-rary Dutch artists in the Museum of Mod-ern Art’s cafe. (Mr. Garcia Mosqueda laterdid internships at Moss and with Ms. An-tonelli.)

In 2009, Droog itself created a SoHoshop. It lasted less than two years, a casu-alty of an awkward duplex space and a glo-bal economic crisis. Mr. Bakker and Ms.Ramakers ended their partnership soon af-ter it opened.

But Chamber is only one token of a new

Dutch design invasion here. Three hun-dred and fifty years after the Dutch sur-rendered New Amsterdam to the British,several of their more creative descendantsare reclaiming this turf.

In March, the first American branch ofthe Dutch hotel chain CitizenM opened inTimes Square. Like its European siblings,it has tiny guest rooms, streamlined serv-ices and vibrant public spaces explodingwith color. The design template is by Con-crete, an architecture and branding com-pany based in Amsterdam that is nowworking on a three-tower residentialproject on the New Jersey waterfront aswell as affordable housing on Staten Is-land.

This month, finishing touches are beingput on Huys, an office building at Park Av-enue and 28th Street that has been con-verted into a 58-unit luxury condo. Huys(which is pronounced, and means,“house”) is an all-Dutch affair: The devel-

oper is Kroonenberg Groep, based in Am-sterdam, and the designer is Piet Boon,who practices a lush, restrained interna-tional style. Karin Meyn, Mr. Boon’s wife,styled the cream-colored décor and se-lected the art, much of it by her compatri-ots. Piet Oudolf, the landscape designerprobably best known to New Yorkers forplanting feathery perennials on the HighLine, is in charge of the rooftop garden.And at press time, workers were preparingto hoist Frederik Molenschot’s biomorphiccast-bronze chandelier in the lobby. (Mr.Molenschot, an Amsterdam artist, alsosupplied all of the room numbers, whichare solid brass.)

With Huys getting ready to open in Oc-tober, Mr. Boon has moved on — to Brook-lyn. He designed Oosten (Dutch for“east”), a condominium to be built on thetwo-acre site of a former brewery at 429Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg.Scheduled for completion in 2016, the com-

THE DETAILS

The Dutch Are Back in Town

Above: Guest room and publicarea at CitizenM New York, de-signed by Concrete. Right: TheDutch-born interior designerGhislaine Viñas specifiedMoooi’s popular RandomLights and love-it-or-hate-it Pigtable in two of her projects.

Moooi’s Amsterdam showroomdisplays furniture groupingsthat combine attention-gettingpieces with quieter designs.(The photographic backdropsare by Massimo Listri.) CasperVissers, the company’s chiefexecutive, said that the NewYork showroom will be de-signed in the same spirit.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE D1

TOP LEFT AND RIGHT, ADRIAN GAUT; ABOVE LEFT, GARRETT ROWLAND; ABOVE RIGHT, ERIC LAIGNEL

Above: Renderings of Piet Boon’sdesign for Oosten, a condominiumdevelopment in Williamsburg,Brooklyn. Below: Tesla tripod madefrom Eastern European componentsby 360Volt for Chamber ($2,350).

C M Y K Nxxx,2014-09-11,D,006,Bs-4C,E1

N D7THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

plex, the first ground-up American projectof the Chinese XIN Development GroupInternational, will have 216 units, including15 townhouses, and a 55-foot-long swim-ming pool.

And then there’s Moooi (“beautiful” inDutch, with an extra “o” for emphasis).The design company, founded 14 years agoby Marcel Wanders, is known for sellingeccentricities like Studio Job’s massive,stripped-down furniture made of paper.Early next year, it will open its first Ameri-can showroom on East 31st Street andMadison Avenue.

Why New York? Why now? Like achorus of old vaudevillians, the people whowere asked to explain the recent influx ofDutch design all used the same word: tim-ing. The American economy has bouncedback faster than Europe’s, they said, and

New York remains a cultural capital, withan international assortment of big spend-ers.

Lesley Bamberger, chief executive ofKroonenberg Groep, Huys’s developer,said he bought the building at 404 Park Av-enue South 14 years ago as an investment.Then the New York real estate marketheated up, and there is no one like theDutch to seize a commercial opportunity.“The Dutch have always been tradesmen,”he said, adding that Huys is 90 percentsold. All that remains available (and onlybecause they haven’t been listed) are fiveof the six penthouses, priced from $6.75million.

“There are lots of business reasons andlots of emotional reasons” for the decisionto open in New York, said Casper Vissers,Moooi’s co-founder and chief executive.Over the last four years, the company’sAmerican sales have doubled every yearand now represent 25 percent of its busi-ness.

On top of that, he added, New York isfilled with architects and designers whoare Moooi’s primary customers, althoughthey may not realize that the company pro-duces furniture. (Eighty percent of whatAmericans buy from Moooi is lighting, Mr.Vissers said, including a wiry LED-stud-ded sphere called Raimond that is current-ly the company’s biggest seller in theStates.) Moooi is also looking to expand tothe West Coast and Chicago.

Robert Kloos, director for visual arts, ar-chitecture and design at the NetherlandsConsulate General in New York, said thatthe recession did some Dutch designers abackhanded favor by causing the generousgovernment subsidies awarded to theDutch cultural sector to be cut by 20 per-cent.

As a result, designers diversified theirpractices and sought markets abroad.Compared with 2008, Mr. Kloos said, “I’mpleasantly surprised that these days notonly are there 40 to 50 percent more

projects by Dutch artists and designers inthe U.S., but the quality has also acceler-ated.”

Yet it was precisely those subsidies thatallowed Dutch designers to braise in thejuices of their creativity without worryingabout paying the rent. Piet Boon’s sleek,creamy neutrality makes him an easy sell.But how will the quirky creations associat-ed with the phrase “Dutch design” fare to-day in the land of Ethan Allen?

Ghislaine Van Loosbroek Viñas, a NewYork interior designer born in the Nether-lands and raised in South Africa, likes tosprinkle Moooi designs into her projects.One of her litmus tests with clients is a ta-ble the company developed in 2006 withthe Swedish design collective Front, a life-size black pig balancing a tray on its head.“I love, love, love that table,” she said. “Ican’t tell you how many people I showed itto before I found one who liked it.”

Ms. Viñas first balked at making gener-alizations about Dutch design, but soonidentified some hallmarks. There is the

abundant and adroit use of color, she said,and a playfulness that Americans mightconsider childish but is merely contempo-rary. “I think that what the American audi-ence may not be ready for,” she added,“and what they don’t get automatically, isthe irony and wit that so much Dutch de-sign has.”

Will Moooi’s witty offerings be culled foran American market? Mr. Vissers saidthat what you see in Amsterdam you willget in New York, in an environment whosemise-en-scène resembles that of the flag-ship showroom.

But over all, the company has been ton-ing things down. “For sure, in the past ourcollection was not fit to complete a housewith,” said Mr. Wanders, the company’screative director. “It was more you’d add afew Moooi pieces to give a place some ex-tra character.” That is changing, he said,with the addition of quieter pieces that arenot intended to start conversations, butsimply furnish a room. “More and more,you see the collection of Moooi as a col-

lection you can build interiors with.”Speaking of the early years of Droog and

the work that set so many tongues wag-ging, the avant-garde design purveyorMurray Moss made a distinction: “Itwasn’t clever, it was smart,” he said.

Mr. Moss believes that the “wow factor”of curios like Mr. Wanders’s porcelain budvase created from a burned-away spongeor Peter van der Jagt’s doorbell that rang apair of wineglasses overwhelmed their in-genuity and depth. “There was humor, andthere was hubris, and it resulted in a redef-inition of what beauty was,” he said.

The passage of time has allowed suchpieces to be viewed without the stigma ofnovelty, he said. They can be appreciatedalongside the designs of other influentialmovements. And with Studio Job’s assem-blage for Chamber, which brings new art-ists into the mix, one can also see how theDutch design DNA is being passed down.

“I love that work,” Mr. Moss said. “I wasthe first to look at it. Now it’s going on to anew generation.”

What Americans maynot get automatically is‘the irony and wit’ ofDutch design.

Rendering of Concrete Archi-tectural Associates’ designfor Harborside Plaza in Jer-sey City, center. Scheduledfor completion in 2016, it willhave three towers and 2,358rental apartments.

Clockwise from above: Frede-rik Molenschot’s bespokeroom numbers for Huys; ex-truded Dumpling vase by Flo-ris Wubben for Chamber($1,275); and two model apart-ment interiors from Huys,with styling by Karin Meyn.

LEFT AND BELOW LEFT, PAUL BARBERA; ABOVE, MAARTEN WILLEMSTEIN

was turned down by severalfriends. Maybe Philip Glass wouldbe interested. The plot is like the“Nibelungen.” The ring is lost, butit’s not the ring. It’s the O-ring,which has the magical power toseal the human excrement fromleaking out everywhere. It pro-tects the big city from diseases.That’s a miracle of civilization.

In our work here in the Home sec-tion, plumbing can be a kind of ex-cess, where the bathroom is a six-figure temple, with over-the-topshowers and tubs. What do thinkabout this practice of showeringmoney into the bathroom?

I was in Albany in the biggestplumbing supply store in theNortheast. These are 19th-centurycreations. We believe that this iswhat we are [points to a comput-er], but this is what we really are[points to the plumbing fixturepaintings]. Plumbing is invisibleand an amazing human invention.These things are beautiful. Lookat this quarter-turn angle valve.What a beauty. They are chrome-plated solid brass. Of course I’ve

framed them traditionally. Comesee me in December. I’ll be talk-ing about neo-senility.

What does that mean, and whocoined the phrase?

Art is a neo-senility mode. Itkeeps forgetting stuff and imitat-ing itself. It’s a totally senile

world. I coined the phrase. It’smine, yes. It belongs to me. I’mgiving you permission to use it.PENELOPE GREEN

“The Art of Plumbing” will be onview at 45 Lispenard Street(Church Street) from Sept. 17 toOct. 17. Information: 518-567-8922or arthealingministry.net.

Q&A

CONTINUED FROM PAGE D2

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