For T’s holiday issue, I wrote about Gabriel Hendifar, the artistic director of Apparatus, a New York-based lighting and furniture studio he cofounded in 2012, who, through designing his own SoHo rental apartment — the first home he’d ever really done for himself — was able to reconcile all the various parts of his identity that he’d spent his life trying to compartmentalize or diminish. “To be taken seriously, I’ve needed to demonstrate a mastery of the Western design canon,” he told me. “Being in this space where I’ve gotten to integrate my family’s connection to Eastern art — it’s been really aligning.” 📸 David Chow