Window Week!

The windows on Billionaire's Row were built for artists

Welcome to Window Week!

We are doing a slow-motion design process for the 1975 play Checking Out by Allen Swift. The set required for this show is a realistic apartment, and the play serves well as a teaching moment for how to design one of those - but many other great plays that get performed hundreds of times a year require a realistic apartment set. Why choose a play that no one will produce ever again?

Because! this show fails if you don’t get the set correct! The original production got some laughs, but, ultimately, it failed because the set designer (and the playwright) got the set wrong.

So, hundreds of designers attempt this show, just on paper and in models, to see if we can get it right - and the vast majority of us fail the first time, and the second. I cracked the case on my third attempt. The secret to success can be summed up in one word: Windows.