Nouveau Brooklyn

New York — THE fashionably coiffed woman of a certain age stares curiously at sawdust-covered Bart Bettencourt and Carlos Salgado as they have their picture taken on striped benches on North 6th Street.

"Oh, are you in a band?" she inquires.

Not quite. Bettencourt and Salgado do call themselves Scrapile, a worthy rocker name, but this duo makes recycled wood furniture, not music. In the low-rent, semi-industrial neighborhood on the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge, scrappy young architects and crafts artisans are forging a 21st century design movement.

Summoning the example of Charles and Ray Eames, who led a midcentury design revolution in Southern California 50 years ago, the Williamsburg set -- some self-taught, some educated at New York art academies such as Parsons and Pratt, and some formerly apprenticed to industrial designer Karim Rashid -- are form-follows-function modernists.

What binds them is design that is ecologically sensitive and reflects the possibilities of the California lifestyle. Turning their back on Manhattan to follow design developments in Europe and the West Coast, they share a cheeky wit summed up by the name of the neighborhood shop and hangout that shows their work: the Future Perfect.

For L.A.'s cutting-edge home decor retailers such as Show in Los Feliz, Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood has become the most important resource in New York for bold new designs. Show owner Brad Cook estimates that nearly a third of his merchandise comes from the emerging design destination.

"I go to New York specifically to meet with Brooklyn designers," says Laser Rosenberg of L.A.'s Homework, which has sold Williamsburg-based architect Matt Gagnon's light fixtures to clients here and abroad since 1999. "That's where artists can afford to live now and it's where the freshest designs -- furniture that is pared down but sophisticated and thought-provoking -- are coming from."

Rosenberg's L.A. clients, many of them transplanted New Yorkers, are attracted to the Brooklyn designs for their minimalist forms and interesting materials. They work equally well in Hollywood Hills Case Study homes and converted old industrial spaces in downtown L.A., Rosenberg says, and the fact that many pieces are handmade in limited quantities adds exclusivity to bragging rights.