The SoHo Design District, a nonprofit organization, aligns furniture, lighting and home-decor brands, is officially launching tomorrow with a kickoff event at Cassina's Wooster Street showroom. The district includes brands like Artemide, Blackbody, BluDot, Cappellini, Cassina, Design Within Reach, Flou, Fontana Arte,  Foscarini, Gandia Blasco, Luceplan, Modular Lighting Instruments, Moroso, Nanimarquina, Poltrona Frau, Room & Board, Stepevi and USM. "For decades, SoHo has been known as an international destination for design, art, culture and architecture. Our partnership facilitates working together to sustain this history and be a larger resource for design professionals, students and enthusiasts alike," states SoHo Design District President and founding member Dahlia Latif.

The group originally formed over practical issues, such as how to address rent increases, but today the alliance has helped build its community into a major design hub. Mirko van den Winkel, executive vice president of Moroso USA and founding member says, “SoHo is the neighborhood with the largest concentration of the best in design furniture and lighting brands in America. It’s empowering to have created the SoHo Design District together, enabling the organization of big and small design events throughout the year and a clear map detailing where to shop for the leading design products. The SoHo Design District is a design destination, a source of inspiration and a vehicle to educate on design."

Map of the SoHo Design District

The organization is also committed to protecting SoHo's neighborhood feel from big-brand influence, and has allied with other organizations. Explains Sean Sweeney, executive director of the SoHo Alliance, “The SoHo Alliance has always maintained that the design showrooms are the natural evolution of the art galleries that first drew world-wide attention to SoHo. Design represents art that we can use. The creative talents of the many designers and architects provide a welcomed cachet to SoHo that the chain and big-box stores do not. We support strongly all efforts by our elected officials to maintain this industry in our neighborhood and we shall strive to do our best at maintaining its presence.”

Learn more about the organization and its upcoming events.