OUR STORY

Roman and Williams was founded by Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer in 2002 as a multidisciplinary architecture and design studio focused on creating buildings and interiors rooted in a modern paradigm of craftsmanship and history.

Kindred spirits drawn together by an innate artistic devotion, Alesch and Standefer met on the set of Hollywood films, the first vehicles for their storytelling. They brought a shared love of nature, geometries, form, and historical archetypes to the worlds that they created. They began their practice after an acclaimed actor asked them to create a home that would last longer than a film set. They named their studio Roman and Williams after their maternal grandfathers, with the vision of creating something that would live beyond them.

In the two decades since its founding, Roman and Williams has created renowned hotels, restaurants, homes, and cultural spaces around the world. Celebrated for their ability to translate timeless traditions into a modern context, Roman and Williams has become synonymous with beauty and integrity, creating spaces that heighten the senses and objects that elevate the everyday.

From their first collaborations, Alesch and Standefer have expanded their vision for living, growing new branches in their family tree: their original designs for furniture and lighting, the restaurant La Mercerie, and RW Guild and Guild Gallery on New York’s Canal Street, where they nurture a contemporary guild of artists and artisans through their shop and exhibitions.

OUR
FOUNDERS

The partnership of Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer is at the core of Roman and Williams. This is a love story.

Born in New York, Standefer studied painting in college and at New York’s Art Students League before working for gallerist Leo Castelli. Alesch, meanwhile, was raised in California and completed a traditional ten-year apprenticeship in the offices of several L.A. architects. Alesch and Standefer met in 1992 on a film set. Over the course of a decade, their professional collaboration became a personal relationship. In 2002 they left film to establish Roman and Williams Building and Interiors.

Roman and Williams springs from their complementary strengths. Standefer combines an academic and theoretical knowledge of the arts, architecture, and design with a practical command of color theory, storytelling, and object curation. Alesch is a skilled master builder, draftsman, designer, and craftsman. To this day, Alesch renders all of Roman and Williams’ presentation drawings by hand, providing a visual narrative that expresses the DNA of every project. Standefer then translates that narrative, articulating the vision to make it happen.

Standefer and Alesch have received hundreds of awards for their work, including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Excellence in Interior Design, the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation Visionary Award, and the Palladio Award. They split their time between New York, where their practice is headquartered, and Montauk, which serves as a studio and laboratory for their designs and ideas.

We believe that a practice in architecture and design need not be bound by a single idiom. A family of diverse vocabularies can spring from the same source, bound by a rigorous philosophy but mined from multiple sources.

We create buildings, spaces, and objects that collapse past, present, and future. We have a reverence for the history, materials, and techniques of the past with an ever-present focus on the now.

We animate spaces by unearthing stories, amplifying traditions, and reinterpreting symbols. Everything we design, from an object to a building, is underpinned by narrative.

We design things that are meant to be well-used and long-lasting, embracing the beauty of time and wear and rejecting the preciousness of the untouchable. We hope that our buildings and objects will live well beyond us.

We are naturalists, inspired by the twists and turns of nature's wild imperfection. We are inspired by natural materials, geometries, and evolution through use.

We embrace and strive for beauty, and believe that beauty can be found in guises both humble and sublime. We believe that design has the power to elevate the everyday.