As the late twentieth-century fascination with rounded shapes, organic influences, and plastics fades, interior designers are increasingly drawn to deep colors, polished woods, velvets, furs, leather, dark metals, and brick that have a nostalgic quality—materials used liberally in centuries gone by. Efforts to shape a more authentic, less austere present by creating an idealized version of the past have begun to appear in commercial and residential design throughout the country and abroad.

Dark Nostalgia presents twenty-six projects that exemplify the smooth incorporation of evocative historic detail into current interiors. Public spaces, including New York’s famous Royalton Hotel lobby renovation, the Clift Hotel bar in San Francisco, and Alain Ducasse’s newest restaurant, Adour, as well as private residences and smaller, intimate restaurants and clubs by cutting-edge designers, including AvroKO, David Rockwell, Roman & Williams, Julian Schnabel, Philippe Starck, and Adam Tihany, demonstrate the many successful ways this trend towards a dark nostalgia has been incorporated in recent designs.