Listening to Michael Wolk discuss inspiration for his designs is like watching an artist glide his brush across a canvas. Those designs range from the highly publicized Porsche Design Tower to some of his favorite projects, like an 18,000 square foot home in Napa for a repeat customer. 

“Seeing things go from my ideas to reality is what I most love about design,” Michael says. Those ideas include The Tucker Chair, which is featured in Batman Returns and Inspector Gadget. He is also one of the select few artists chosen to collaborate with Absolut Vodka on its memorable campaign inspired by the brand’s iconic bottle shape. Absolut Wolk features a cool, sleek chair tufted in the shape of the Absolut bottle and upholstered in the brand’s signature blue shade. It’s work like this, along with his furniture, lighting and fabric lines for some of the world’s top manufacturers that have landed Michael awards like DCOTA Stars of Design for Best Product Designer and ASID International Product Design Award.  

Whether it’s the St Regis Resort in Bal Harbour, the Diplomat Hotel Residences or Atlantikos Restaurant, Michael’s goal with any design project is the “keep accomplishing more impeccable, immaculate, incredible, inventive, inviolable, iridescent, irrepressible, irreverent, impassioned, imaginative and incomparable designs,” he says. And it’s something he does with the team at Michael Wolk Design by his side, noting “the joy of accomplishing with (teammates) friends and family more than what you would on your own,” he says. 

APPROACH

Design as a Discipline

Wolk approaches interior design as more than the arrangement of rooms, materials, and furnishings.

Every project begins with its purpose: who will experience the space, how they will move through it, what they should see and feel, and what the architecture demands of the design.

That thinking extends across every scale of the work—from the planning of a residence or hospitality environment to the proportion of a chair, the edge of a stone surface, or the way light is integrated into a handrail.