Jim Walrod

Jim Walrod, often referred to as the “design guru" is a self-taught interior design consultant and considered an expert in the field of mid century design. In the 1980s, he was an assistant art director for the Italian fashion house, Fiorucci,. Mike D of the Beastie Boys originally coined another of his monikers “the furniture pimp”, used by the press in Rolling Stone magazine. Walrod was born in 1968 in Jersey City, NJ.

Walrod has also consulted on interiors for architects Jean Nouvel and Richard Gluckman. His collaboration with boutique hotelier, Andre Balazs, resulted in the The Standard Downtown LA hotel. Walrod also worked with club and restaurant impresario team Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson. to create The Park restaurant. After 9/11 Walrod designed the interiors of Colors restaurant which is operated by the former employees of the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Center. Opened in 2006, Colors was "inspired by the optimism of the 1939 World's Fair", according to Walrod. He has designed Nolita's Steven Alan Annex the newest additions to the line of hipster fashion and lifestyle emporiums of designer, Steven Alan, completing projects for him in the West Village, at Steven Alan Upper West Side and NoLita. Walrod's most recent commercial projects include designing Gild Hall, a business class hotel in the financial district of Manhattan, and Thompson LES Thompson LES, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on Allen Street, for the Thompson Hotel Group. He also co-curated a show at Cooper Union, in cooperation with the Drawing Center Drawing Center, on Paul Rudolph's drawings for a Lower Manhattan Expressway [1]. Additionally, Walrod has worked on various residential projects which have been featured in the The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and Architectural Digest.

One of his furniture and design retail ventures in the 1990s was Form and Function in Tribeca with partners, Fred Schneider of The B-52's and Jack Feldman. For Ang Lee's 1997 film The Ice Storm, Walrod consulted on the period 1970s furniture and interiors.

In 2004, his design of the Tribeca restaurant, Pace, was featured on the television program Opening Soon on the Food Network. In May 2009 Walrod's designs for Gild Hall, a Thompson hotel in the financial district, were featured as a primary setting in director Steven Soderbergh's film The Girlfriend Experience.