A-List Designers Honored at Sir John Soane Museum Visionaries Gala

ELLE Decor A-List designers Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch of Roman and Williams were honored on Wednesday night at the annual black-tie Visionaries Gala hosted by the Sir John Soane Museum Foundation. Roman and Williams, along with the Hall of Architecture at the Carnegie Museum of Art, garnered the prestigious award for the brilliant use of historical objects in their awe-inspiring architectural and interior design projects, notably the Standard Highline, Le Coucou, and, most recently, their own luxury retail space in SoHo, the Roman and Williams Guild.

Robin and Stephen's aesthetic blends the old and the modern. The name of their firm even follows this trend, as Roman and Williams are borrowed from the designers' grandfathers. More than ever, this will be the case when The Metropolitan Museum of Art reveals its Roman and Williams-redesigned British Galleries in January of 2020, a project that first led Robin and Stephen to visit the Sir John Soane Museum on Lincoln's Inn Fields in central London upon winning the job in 2017. Luke Syson, curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Met, presented the honor at New York's Rainbow Room, and Robin eloquently concluded the acceptance speech urging attendees: "Be curious about what's come before and take that into the future, because for us, that is a dream come true." Sir John Soane would certainly agree.

Proceeds from Wednesday night's gala benefit Soane's Drawing Office, which is considered the only surviving intact workspace of a 19th-century architect. The room overlooks the iconic dome area of the museum, whose architectural models and fragments are safeguarded by a statue of Paul Belvedere, and once restored, will again function as an office to a new residency program for artists and architects.