Traveling Through with David Prior · Thursday, August 13, 2026
Chef Flynn McGarry shares his design aesthetic, influenced by 'quiet maximalism' and Belgian designers like Trees van Nottan and Axel Vervoordt. He emphasizes the importance of contextual design, adapting aesthetics to specific locations like New York, contrasting it with the more rigid approach of Scandinavian modernism.
“And I think what I really learned there too is I think the biggest thing that kind of like you're saying that Belgium is really good at, is knowing context design, understanding that you can't do the same thing everywhere.”
“And I think that is something that Scandinavian you know, classics are you know, scanning and Modernism was less of because it was all very much so just kind of built new and like was very like clean lines. I had these this very rigid which is also scannab it all that ways, like very rigid mentality that I think the Belgian is a little bit more like I went to Japan and I bought all these amazing ceramics, and how do they fit in my neo classic house?”
“And I think that is something that I have really brought into like how I look at New York that is like there if I'm in this space in the Lower East Side or in this brand new building or whatever, like I can't bring the same thing everywhere because it needs to make sense in the context from the table where like so.”