Boym Partners
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Design |
| Founded | 1986 |
| Founder | Constantin Boym |
| Headquarters | New York City , United States |
Key people | Constantin Boym, Laurene Leon Boym |
| Products | Tableware, timepieces, lighting solutions, showroom concepts, collectible series, exhibition designs |
Boym Partners is a design company headquartered in New York City, United States.
History
Established in 1986 by Constantin Boym, the firm is currently managed by Constantin alongside Laurene Leon Boym, who became part of the team in 1995. Boym Partners functions as a multidisciplinary design agency, developing both client-commissioned products and environments as well as independently created artistic projects. Their work encompasses tableware designed for Authentics and Alessi, timepieces for Swatch, lighting solutions for Flos, and showroom concepts for Vitra.
Souvenirs
Beginning in 1997, the firm has produced collectible series including Souvenirs for the End of the Century, which commemorates significant events of the 20th century. Among these, the Buildings of Disaster collection presents miniature architectural models representing locations associated with notable catastrophes, such as the Unabomber's cabin, the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Chernobyl, and the Lorraine Motel. After the events of 9/11, replicas of The Pentagon and the World Trade Center were added. In response to the 2008 economic downturn, Boym Partners introduced a series of models depicting skyscrapers that remained unbuilt due to the financial collapse.
Their creative output from 1985 through 2002 was documented in the 2002 publication by Princeton Architecture Press titled Curious Boym: Design Works. The firm received the National Design Award in Product Design in 2009. A comprehensive monograph detailing their history and projects, named Keepsakes: A Design Memoir, was released in 2015.
Museums
Works by Boym Partners are held within the permanent collections of both the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The company’s exhibition designs have been displayed at institutions such as the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Additionally, they developed souvenir renderings for Cooper-Hewitt’s mansion that incorporated emoticons into their aesthetic. In 2009, their exhibition Timeless Objects, which presented everyday items transformed with bronze-like finishes to enhance their artistic value, was exhibited at ExperimentaDesign in Lisbon, Chicago’s Wright Gallery, and Cooper-Hewitt.