Kyla Coburn Designs LLC was founded in 2006 by its namesake, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate, and has evolved in recent years. Although primarily known as a restaurant designer for notable spaces, including The Grange and Loie Fuller’s in Federal Hill, Coburn’s company has also played a local role in rehabbing historic structures.
Typically, her business occupies a building or mill, which it then renovates into mixed-use space for artists where they can live and work. Over the years, the company has switched locations, moving on to new projects and opportunities in cities across Rhode Island, including Providence and Central Falls.
She’s now located in Warwick, where the business occupies a Colonial-era building in the village of Apponaug.
She’s planning another move in the next year, to Pawtucket, where her company is renovating a historic church, a former Universalist church. The project will include live-work apartments and display areas for artists, and a community space for exhibitions.
Part of the continuous movement is a need for storage space for the business. To build out her interiors, and create the vision she and a client have for a space, Coburn has collected a mass of items and furnishings, which need to be stored.
“What we end up doing is we shop all year for interesting pieces,” she explained. “I travel to Morocco. I travel to the Brimfield [Antique Fair.] I collect. We do one-of-a-kind, striking interiors. We care a lot about authenticity. I need to get something you can’t get from a website.”
Her collections include what she calls essential items, things that will make or break a concept for a new space, all waiting for the right client. “We store them and we wait.”
Her plan for the Pawtucket church is not yet finalized, but she envisions it as work-live space for artists who want to be a part of an emerging community.
Pawtucket recently approved a $30,000 grant-loan for exterior work on the former church, located at 222 High St. Coburn expects the completed space will be a $900,000 to $1.1 million project.
In Pawtucket, the environment is rich with inspiration and space. Various areas are taped off for client projects. So, when she recently renovated the guest dressing rooms at Jimmy Fallon’s studio in New York, she was able to assemble the various rooms in Pawtucket, down to the inch.
She wants to grow the national reach of her company, by using Rhode Island as the design and build space, and then moving completed interiors to their locations.
“It’s really problem-solving,” she said, describing her work. “We started out as artists, making wild things. And we’ve had customers that have wanted that.”
For Fallon, she created seven guest dressing rooms that evolved around different themes. The New York room has an upscale East Side Manhattan theme, as well as a grittier SOHO side. A 1950s camper room has a collection of travel books, postcards, a pop-down ironing board and other vintage items.
“We have a lot of fun with the projects, and that’s what keeps us going,” she said.
OWNER: Kyla Coburn
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Design-build, interior design, consulting
LOCATION: 1058 Greenwich Ave., Warwick
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2006
EMPLOYEES: 7 full time
ANNUAL SALES: WND