Lionel Ohayon, ICRAVE: NoMad native by choice
With meaning and purpose, a design studio makes its mark.
When Lionel Ohayon, founder of the architectural firm ICRAVE (implying “desire” and pre-dating the Apple iMac), wanted to move his studio from NY’s Meatpacking District to a new location in 2012, he could have chosen anywhere in the world — but anywhere wasn’t what he had in mind. NoMad was.
Opting for a light-filled space at 1140 Broadway, close to Madison Square Park, the innovative executive intuitively understood that NoMad had “the potential to be New York’s next hot neighborhood.” Designing and creating the interior to suit the needs of the firm, it was important to Ohayon that the studio reflect the strong creative culture he was building. The move was, in many ways, a boost for ICRAVE’s collective talent, a hospitality environment where they could host clients, throw parties, and collaborate with peers.
The studio’s website says it best: “We call it our #1 experience design work. Everything we do springs from the functionality, flexibility and collaborative energy the space provides — it’s where our topnotch architects, designers and digital artists collaborate with our clients in a happy, inspiring place.”
The studio in NoMad is the first project ICRAVE designed and executed for themselves; it is their moment. The space — a truly creative hub — features an open layout that supports the team’s day-to-day work alongside breakout rooms that foster team-building. “I think this was the first time we actually thought about what our space could be,” Ohayon said. “We had two offices before this one. One in Chelsea and one in the Meatpacking District. But this was the first time we thought, ‘okay we are kind of growing up a bit, so what do we actually want to do.’ We wanted to do it right, as opposed to just throwing some tables in a room and plugging in computers.”
The end result was very much a team effort. “We brought the teams up into these creative sessions and had people working on different areas and collaborating so we could get very close to what we thought we needed,” he added. “We didn’t want it to feel too precious because that’s not a great environment for creativity. It was important to us that it felt cool.”
Everything in the NoMad studio has meaning and purpose. The reception area, outfitted with inviting couches, is designed to convert into an entertainment space with a check-in desk that doubles as a DJ booth and a community table. Giant doors open to a group meeting area that offers a wide variety of seating options and connects to a well-equipped kitchen. The work area is flooded with natural light from windows that face a bird’s eye view of the newly-named NoMad Piazza. Ohayon, explained that during the buildout, they raised the floors to accentuate the windows — which is a perfect example of how this studio thinks outside the box, always on the lookout for inspired interpretations and solutions. The large room is filled with rows of desks and a design library that houses thousands of design material samples.
During Covid, when the number of people who could be in the office at one time was limited, ICRAVE partnered with Benjamin Moore on a mural project that serves as both a unique work of art and a symbolic reminder of how the team stayed connected and in touch during a difficult time. Everyone was assigned a paint color, and on the days when they came into the office, they climbed a ladder and dripped a stripe of paint down the wall — from the ceiling to the floor. The mural is the first thing visitors notice as they step off the elevator. “You see sections where people were in more often, and sections where they weren’t,” explained Ohayon.
The mural is just one of many ways the team honors where they’ve been and where they are going. A glass-topped coffee table showcases Polaroids of the ICRAVE family, and in the perfect nod to the NoMad studio’s pre- renovation days — when rollerskating back and forth on the old wood floors was just another way for the team to get the ideas flowing — a pair of skates are prominently displayed.
“We were told by clients in our old office that they would walk in and the hair on the back of their neck would stand up because they just felt this energy and creativity,” Ohayon added. “We said, ‘whatever that is, let’s not lose that.’ We wanted to foster that and make sure it didn’t get fancy and boring in this new space.”
Ohayon’s office, affectionately known as the “Lion’s Den” is often used by his team for meetings when he’s traveling or working in ICRAVE’s sister office in Miami. Though only in New York one week a month, the city holds a warm spot in his heart; it’s where his career flourished. Ohayon once lived in an apartment at Madison Green Terrace (22nd Street and Fifth Avenue), but currently calls the Made Hotel on 29th Street his home whenever he’s in town. When asked about his favorite restaurants — in addition to mentioning Planta, Gaonnuri, and The Ned — he said his go-to spot is a tiny hole-in-the-wall on 26th Street serving Latin American cuisine. “It’s family run and you go in and get rice and beans and baked chicken. It doesn’t even really have a name, but the food is amazing. I drag a lot of people there for meetings and they look at me like I’m crazy.”
Founded in 2002, ICRAVE is an internationally renowned and award-winning design studio with an impressive client roster that includes Fortune-500 companies, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, and spas. Ohayon is recognized as one of the leading creatives in the design space and is largely credited for helping to transform the Meatpacking District — his old neighborhood — into one of Manhattan’s hottest addresses and reinventing the patient experience at the cancer center at Memorial Sloan Kettering. For MSK, Ohayon and his team quite literally put themselves in the shoes of chemo patients and designed a space that was both comfortable and up-lifting.
ICRAVE has always been at the forefront of design innovation, working at the intersection of physical and digital design experiences. Because the design world continues to evolve with the impact of new technologies, Ohayon has co-founded a new business called Journey. “We believe it’s the evolution of design services and it was created to serve our clients’ needs in today’s changing world,” he explained.
Journey brings together physical, immersive, virtual, and AI into a single agency. It combines ICRAVE’s design excellence in the realm of creating physical experiences with London-based Squint/Opera — an award-winning firm delivering immersive experiences and digital twinning on many of the biggest projects on the world stage. Led by Cathy Hackl, the virtual studio is developing and delivering real experiences in an array of new virtual platforms driven by AI Experience Studio that uses voice and generative AI solutions to enhance the experience solutions across physical, immersive and virtual. “We firmly believe that to properly deliver a project today we must see the entire project through this focused lens,” he added. “I’m excited about the projects we are working on and how Journey really delivers a 360 solution in a modern design agency.”
Ohayon, who wanted to be an architect ever since he was a young boy, became involved with The NoMad Alliance and the ongoing changes in the neighborhood sometime around 2012/2013. Since planting roots in NoMad, ICRAVE has grown to 40 designers, strategists, and architects. While each project continues to grow in scale and consistency, Ohayon says curiosity and rigor will continue to be the biggest motivators and will remain so as they continue to evolve.
There is something that is both very New York and yet very unique to the NoMad neighborhood that ultimately appeals to Ohayon. “It’s an interesting time for the neighborhood,” he said. “You have high end and low-end storefronts and restaurants and everything in-between. It’s something New York used to have everywhere, but you’re seeing fewer and fewer of those experiences as everything gets gentrified and the fabric of the city gets lost. I’m hoping that this neighborhood retains some of that grit and those unknown surprises that you might find here.”
In many ways, that thought process gets to the heart of what NoMad is, what the neighborhood strives to become, and how hard the community here works to protect its history. Something Lionel Ohayon and the creative team at ICRAVE in NoMad know more than a little something about.