Why Ken Fulk is in the Design 100

Ken Fulk founded his design studio in San Francisco in 1997, and built its reputation from what he calls the Magic Factory, a former leather warehouse bought in 2007 and converted into studio, workshop and living quarters. The firm later added a New York studio alongside its San Francisco base, and its interiors are known for a maximalist, narrative-led style, rooms conceived less as neutral backdrops than as fully art-directed sets for the people who live in them.

That instinct for staging extends into hospitality and events, where Fulk serves as creative director for Major Food Group and has shaped restaurants and hotels including Miami’s Goodtime Hotel, developed with Pharrell Williams, and San Francisco’s members’ club The Battery. It amounts to a practice that treats interiors, events and brand-building as a single discipline, theatrical in effect but grounded in a working knowledge of how hospitality spaces actually operate.