Add Some Dramatic Furniture Into Your Home

Even as a startup, the Manhattan-based design studio Apparatus cultivated a very specific mood in its Chelsea gallery. Flowers, incense, a meandering circuit of rooms that wove in and out of dimly lit factory spaces, a killer sound system: They cued a certain sensuality and shopping-as–cocktail party atmosphere, stoking a desire for the company’s adventurous collections of furniture, lighting and objects.

The enforced solitude of the past 18 months pressed pause on the party—though not on sales, which have boomed. During that time, Apparatus has delved deeper into its creative sourcebook to design its biggest collection to date, nearly a decade after the studio first opened. Gabriel Hendifar, artistic director and co-founder, calls the 40-piece offering Act IV. Launching in October, it lives up to its theatrical billing in ways that past Apparatus collections only hinted at.

Hendifar’s visual interests have always been sweeping, from Wiener Werkstätte textiles to Persian marquetry. For Act IV, he drew on the optimism of mid-century modernism and the ethereal, attenuated lines of Near Eastern craft. Among the standout pieces are chairs with skinny upholstered backs; globe lights suspended in suede harnesses, like trapeze artists; and geometric carpets with brass “seams.”

Though Hendifar hadn’t tried his hand at designing seating or carpets before, he pushed himself to take on both. “Making anything, I think, tells you about making everything else,” says the L.A.-born Hendifar, 40, a former fashion designer. “Ultimately it’s about, What does this thing make me feel? I mean, both literally, How does it feel? And then, What does it make you feel emotionally? For me, those are the two guiding questions.”

A few months ago, Apparatus rented a Brooklyn soundstage and mounted a full-blown performance of Act IV, the collection. Films and images were produced to live online, with costumes courtesy of American couturier Ralph Rucci, a supporting cast of pieces from Naga Antiques and a star turn by model Debra Shaw. Participating in spirit, though not in person, was Apparatus co-founder Jeremy Anderson, who has left the day-to-day business to focus full time on his ceramic practice.

Like the rest of Apparatus’s offerings, Act IV is being produced globally and finished in its New York studio, which expanded this past summer to a 45,000-square-foot site in Red Hook, Brooklyn. And in the Chelsea gallery, a refresh is underway—one that might someday soon give Act IV a proper opening night. All Apparatus Act IV items: prices upon request, apparatusstudio.com.

There has been a substantial increase in the number of Australians earning high incomes who are renting their homes instead of owning them, and this may be another element contributing to higher market demand and continually rising rents, according to new research.

The portion of households with an annual income of $140,000 per year (in 2021 dollars), went from 8 percent of the private rental market in 1996 to 24 percent in 2021, according to research by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). The AHURI study highlights that longer-term declines in the rate of home ownership in Australia are likely the cause of this trend.

The biggest challenge this creates is the flow-on effect on lower-income households because they may face stronger competition for a limited supply of rental stock, and they also have less capacity to cope with rising rents that look likely to keep going up due to the entrenched undersupply.

The 2024 ANZ CoreLogic Housing Affordability Report notes that weekly rents have been rising strongly since the pandemic and are currently re-accelerating. “Nationally, annual rent growth has lifted from a recent low of 8.1 percent year-on-year in October 2023, to 8.6 percent year-on-year in March 2024,” according to the report. “The re-acceleration was particularly evident in house rents, where annual growth bottomed out at 6.8 percent in the year to September, and rose to 8.4 percent in the year to March 2024.”

Rents are also rising in markets that have experienced recent declines. “In Hobart, rent values saw a downturn of -6 percent between March and October 2023. Since bottoming out in October, rents have now moved 5 percent higher to the end of March, and are just 1 percent off the record highs in March 2023. The Canberra rental market was the only other capital city to see a decline in rents in recent years, where rent values fell -3.8 percent between June 2022 and September 2023. Since then, Canberra rents have risen 3.5 percent, and are 1 percent from the record high.”

The Productivity Commission’s review of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement points out that high-income earners also have more capacity to relocate to cheaper markets when rents rise, which creates more competition for lower-income households competing for homes in those same areas.

ANZ CoreLogic notes that rents in lower-cost markets have risen the most in recent years, so much so that the portion of earnings that lower-income households have to dedicate to rent has reached a record high 54.3 percent. For middle-income households, it’s 32.2 percent and for high-income households, it’s just 22.9 percent. ‘Housing stress’ has long been defined as requiring more than 30 percent of income to put a roof over your head.

While some high-income households may aspire to own their own homes, rising property values have made that a difficult and long process given the years it takes to save a deposit. ANZ CoreLogic data shows it now takes a median 10.1 years in the capital cities and 9.9 years in regional areas to save a 20 percent deposit to buy a property.

It also takes 48.3 percent of income in the cities and 47.1 percent in the regions to cover mortgage repayments at today’s home loan interest rates, which is far greater than the portion of income required to service rents at a median 30.4 percent in cities and 33.3 percent in the regions.

Add Some Dramatic Furniture Into Your Home

New York design studio Apparatus debuts an imaginative collection.

This may be contributing to continually rising weekly rents