Hugo & Hoby had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with Pirie Associates to design & fabricate the furniture for Yale Law School’s Baker Hall. The massive renovation was the school’s first physical expansion since the completion of the iconic Sterling Law Building in 1931. The vision for the space was to create an academic, social and residential hub for the law school. In view of this, we designed furniture that brings people and ideas together.
We were tasked with fully furnishing 111 luxury student apartments and fabricating larger communal study and conference tables. In total, H&H created over 650 pieces. The magnitude of this project served to showcase how we work with small, local shops to fabricate furniture on a large scale.
All of the furniture for Baker Hall was fabricated within 30 miles of Yale by our talented network of local fabricators. Manufacturing locally is part of our larger commitment to sustainability and the creation of regional manufacturing hours. The materials we use in our designs are also thoughtfully selected. For this project we used locally-sourced native hardwoods and salvaged urban wood from CT cities.
Working with local fabrication partners also enables us to refine our furniture designs through an iterative process. For the Baker Hall project, our fabricators made full sized prototypes of the designs to review before fabricating the full batch. We worked closely with the architects and our amazing fabrication partners to ensure that each piece was strong, durable, meticulously proportioned and visually understated. The Hugo & Hoby process of design goes beyond renderings and shop drawings. From testing finishes’ ability to resist watermarks to ensuring that our designs fit the spaces, we make sure our designs are translated into beautiful, enduring furniture. All photos below by John Muggenborg.
