Blue Green Works Lights Up Bridges—and Beyond

Step into Chinatown’s Billy Cotton-designed French and Basque-inflected restaurant Bridges, helmed by chef Sam Lawrence, and pared-back interiors envelop you. The light emitted from custom pendant lamps in the bar area and sconces within the booths offers a sensorial palate cleanser before any dish is served. Their warm, soft diffusion sets a sophisticated, flirtatious tone, one of unruffled delight, or secrets (and small bites) shared with a smirk. Blue Green Works, a studio led by Peter B. Staples, designed these fixtures—and also happens to be headquartered around the corner.

Staples, who studied film theory and cinematography, started his design career at The Future Perfect in 2009. He then moved to Apparatus in its early days, before returning to The Future Perfect and once again finding a home at Apparatus. In the back and forth, it became evident to Staples that he needed to establish something for himself. “My last day was March 12, 2020,” he tells Surface. “Three days later, time stopped, because of the pandemic, and I threw myself into Blue Green Works.”

“To create something at this time required optimism,” he adds. “There is something inherently optimistic about planning for the future, and planning a collection. It assumes you will keep going and the world will move forward.” A little over a year later after setting off on his own—following months of concepting, development, and prototypes—Staples officially launched Blue Green Works with an appointment-only exhibition with The Future Perfect.

He attributes its early acclaim to the people he collaborated with while the world was on pause. “I had access to a lot of people who, under normal circumstances, would have been really busy,” he says. “They were able to walk me through what it means to start something. They told me it would be harder than you’ll ever know, but you won’t regret anything, and that’s been true.”

Blue Green Works has unveiled several collections since, though this June will mark the studio’s first new formal collection in some time. In many ways, it’s an ideological punctuation mark to what they’ve released so far. Surrounding that launch, there will be several smaller releases, as well. He sees this balance—of line additions and tangential explorations—as one of the studio’s strengths.

Staples’ Chinatown studio is a wonderland of design experimentation, with various concepts in advancing states. The bright space itself lends itself to creativity. “We found it on Craigslist,” he says. “It was the first place we saw. The light in the morning is quite incredible. The ceilings are high, and they’re finished. It was the original Bode space, which I thought brought good energy to it.”

On the walls, Staples has affixed his Palm and Fiber fixtures from 2021, both of which draw inspiration from architect Horace Gifford’s Fire Island homes. “Palm is poppy and colorful and has this restrained playfulness that people gravitate toward,” Staples explains. “I am not one for whimsy but I think there is a levity to what I do. There is a humor to a lot of what the brand does and wants to do. A lot of it is about trying to make sure the work feels like it is coming from an unburdened source.”

Staples looks to color as its own form of communication. “Even though the brand is named after color, strangely, I didn’t think that it would be about color,” he says. “I often ask, ‘how does color carry the message?’ I am still learning what my relationship to color is.” He also notes that there’s something very cinematic about the colors he uses. He couples this understanding with a preoccupation over controlling light and mulling over its effect upon a space.

His Wood collection from 2023 mines the nuance of oak and walnut. “It’s about appreciating wood grain. It’s about having its warmth coming back at you,” Staples says. For these pieces, he sources the wood from Pennsylvania. The fixtures are assembled in Upstate New York. Staples references half-pipes with these designs (he grew up skateboarding), but he’s also infused an architectural intentionality. Wood, Palm, Fiber, and his other collections all inform what’s to come in June.

Despite his ability to manipulate the ambiance of a space, like Bridges, with his work, Staples is driven by a humble quest. “I want to be seventy-five or eighty and look back at my body of work and think I got really good at this,” he says. “I am not doing this for the design lifestyle. I am not here out of aspiration. I am here because of the enjoyment I feel when making the work—and I am here with the hope that I can get really good at it.”