Who

One of the most prolific hospitality designers in New York, Tihany has designed hundreds of restaurants and hotels in the city and beyond.

Backstory

Born to Holocaust survivors in Transylvania, Tihany and his family relocated to Israel when he was a child. After a compulsory three-year stint in the Israeli military (he fought in the Six-Day War), Tihany moved to Milan to earn his architecture degree. He moved to New York in 1973, working as a representative for an Italian design firm. Tihany's first major commission was designing a 110-room apartment for Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms dealer, in the Olympic Towers on Fifth Avenue. He used the money he made to launch his own design firm, Tihany Design, in 1978.

Of note

Tihany has designed over 300 restaurants, many of them grand, high-end affairs like Jean-Georges Vongerichten's eponymous restaurant at the Trump International Hotel & Tower, Thomas Keller's Per Se, Sirio Maccioni's Le Cirque, and the Las Vegas outposts of Wolfgang Puck's Spago and Charlie Palmer's Aureole. He's also active on the hotel front: He crafted the look of Vikram Chatwal's Time Hotel in the theater district, interiors for a Disney cruise ship, and the renovations of the famed King David Hotel in Jerusalem and Fontainebleau Hilton in Miami Beach. Recently, Tihany entered the residential development fray, designing the interior of the Veneto, Related's 34-story luxury development on East 53rd Street. And he's dabbled in product design, too, creating a line of china for Villeroy & Boch and a Martini glass for Bombay gin.

On the side

With partner Francesco Antonucci, Tihany opened the pricey Italian restaurant Remi on the Upper East Side in 1987. (It was relocated to Midtown in the 1990s.) Tihany opened several other branches of Remi in Santa Monica, Mexico City, and Tel Aviv; these days, only the New York location is in business.

Personal

Thrice married, Tihany has two grown children from his second marriage (to Carol Lynn), Sarah and Bram; Bram is a photographer/filmmaker, and Tihany has incorporated his son's photographs and films into several of his hotel and restaurant designs. Tihany and his current wife, Marnie, who works for clothing designer Shin Choi, live in the Village, in the same building as Annabelle Selldorf, Anthony Shorris, and Blythe Danner.

Off hours

Tihany says he smokes three cigars a day: a Dominican in the morning, a Cuban at lunch, and a Double Corona before bed. On Sundays, he and some cigar-smoking buddies meet at the cigar bar Florio's in Little Italy to puff away.