A Hudson Valley Home Turns Into A Living Design Exhibition

Iranian-American architect Amin Tadj has had a storied career, with projects spanning the Tehran Stock Exchange, Detroit’s Art Campus, and Brooklyn’s 154-unit Gowanus Residential Development. His recent venture? Launching a design-build practice and debuting a residential dwelling in the Hudson Valley, which he now calls home. Ohayo Mountain House, as Tadj explains, “began with the exploration and speculation of a specific lifestyle in the Hudson Valley.” The architect sought connection above all: between past and present, indoors and out, private retreat and communal life.

What better way to realize this approach than to turn the 2,500-square-foot, single-story home into an exhibition space for local art? While on the market, the Glenford, New York, abode hosts “Sense of Place,” a site-specific showcase that runs through June 29, 2026, curated by Tadj with Available Items, the Tivoli shop and gallery founded by Kristin Coleman and Chad Phillips. Since April, the residence has been transformed  into an emporium of contemporary design, bringing together 70-plus works by 21 Hudson Valley-based artists and designers. Far from a white cube, Ohayo feels more akin to attending your chic friend’s housewarming party, peppered with stimulating vignettes. In the primary bedroom, Jackrabbit Studio’s kid-core-meets-Memphis Tornillo desk plays well with Ori Carlin’s totemesque earthenware and cedar table lamp, as well as What Remains, a mixed-media fiber work by Kat Howard. In the kitchen, Katie Stout’s voluptuous muslin seating juxtaposes Michael McGrath’s mythically informed wall art. “Life in a house can take on different qualities based on its context,” says Tadj, recalling the show’s opening night, when more than 100 guests filled the home.

Three bedrooms anchor the plan as semi-autonomous zones, each with the option to be pocketed off as a private retreat or opened to the living and dining space. The arrangement recalls the logic of traditional Persian courtyard houses, where private rooms gather around a protected open-air center. At Ohayo, that programming encourages a natural shift between seclusion and community.

Inspired by the grounded character of Dutch and English-origin Hudson Valley vernacular, Tadj notes that such homes were often inward-looking. “This house attempts to bridge those two worlds: the permanent, recognizable ‘soul’ of a Hudson Valley home with the transparent, fluid engagement of a modern pavilion,” he says. That synthesis appears in unexpected flourishes. “In Persian architecture, ceiling geometries are where the magic happens,” Tadj recalls. At Ohayo, ridge beams span alternately between side walls, forming an undulating roofline that echoes the Catskills’ peaks and valleys.

For Available Items founders Coleman and Phillips, the exhibition is a milestone in their mission to highlight the region’s thriving design community. After meeting in 2017 in the Brooklyn design scene, the life-and-work partners relocated to Germantown in April 2020. Two years later, they opened Available Items in nearby Tivoli, filling a mixed-use former house with modern, rustic, outsider, and folk art pieces collected during the pandemic alongside contemporary work by friends, including LikeMindedObjects.

“This project was kind of kismet,” Coleman recalls. She and Phillips had already been imagining an exhibition in a modern upstate home when Tadj mentioned, at a holiday party last December, that he wanted to mount a show in the house he was completing. The title, Coleman adds, was difficult to land. “Sense of Place” ultimately suggested not just geography, but emotional attachment. “It hints at the emotional ties to a place, which felt right for this project,” she says.

Outreach began in early January, while Ohayo was still under construction. “We had a good idea of who we wanted to feature,” Coleman explains, “but we didn’t want to pressure people to make new work.” Some participants were longtime friends or designers Available Items had shown or stocked before; others, including Kat Howard and Michael McGrath, were artists whose work Coleman and Phillips had admired from afar.

Planning depended on renderings, mockups, site visits, and constant adjustment. Coleman created room-by-room mood boards in Canva, measured on site, and revised as architectural decisions evolved. Botanical designer April Johnson, aka Flowerpsycho, animates the kitchen with a massive aerial wheat installation, while Tristan Fitch’s typographically informed yellow Space 1 sculpture catches the eye from the terrace and rock garden. Tadj also contributed his own aluminum Bendi Lounge and Loveseat, both stocked at Available Items.

The show encourages a nonlinear path of discovery, inviting visitors to wander at their own pace. They might begin in the front field, move through the main level, descend to the media room, and continue outdoors toward the fire pit and pool area. Rather than stand alone, objects operate as participants in domestic vignettes, inviting viewers to imagine how contemporary art and design might be lived with.

The roster includes Joshua Vogel, Katie Stout, Francesca DiMattio, Kieran Kinsella, LikeMindedObjects, Jackrabbit Studio, Swell Studio, and others, with works spanning wood, metal, ceramics, resin, lighting, sculpture, and organic materials. Coleman notes that while the Hudson Valley is often associated with woodworking, the contemporary design scene is far broader. “There is a world-class contemporary design scene here,” she says.

Available Items has always resisted a single aesthetic, mixing vintage and contemporary, local and international, emerging and established. With “Sense of Place,” that sensibility scales up from shop to house, placing objects in dialogue with architecture and landscape rather than treating them as stand-alone commodities.

For Tadj, “Sense of Place” augments a traditional real estate listing, revealing qualities not fully visible in photographs or drawings. “It gave the house a purpose and life during marketing,” he concludes, “turning what would otherwise be an empty space into something vibrant.”