Located on the top floor of a splendid old residential building on Park Avenue, this apartment was purchased by a husband and wife fashion design team because of its relative proximity to their Seventh Avenue workshops and showroom. Aside from its location, there were few things they liked about the apartment. Their requests to us were to make the entry dramatic; make the apartment feel larger; design an unusual fireplace; add a powder room; create a modern, efficient kitchen; and increase clothing storage space.
The apartment was entirely gutted. Where there had been a small closet, a curved powder room was added. The dining room was opened up to the foyer so that both would feel bigger. To create a new better kitchen, space was borrowed from the bedroom closets; to improve the bedroom closets, space was borrowed from the old kitchen. Most significant, cranked, detached, and sculpted wall was added to clarify circulation from foyer to the living room and back to the dining room, keeping the bedroom a private area. Both the cranked wall and the new powder room were detailed to read as objects inserted into the space.
To make the apartment feel larger than its fairly small 850 square feet, the top of the cranked wall was sloped into a forced perspective. The top of the wall carries concealed incandescent cove lighting that discreetly illuminates the path from the entry, past the dining room and into the living room. The wall is animated with recessed display niches and terminates at the mid-point of the living room with a fireplace mantel crafted of a gun-blue, hand-ground steel plate attached to the wall with galvanized steel and brass fasteners.
The cabinetry of the simple galleylike kitchen and the living room is constructed of Finnish plywood. All wall surfaces were painted –new construction in strong shades of green in contrast to the very pale green of the original apartment shell. The bathrooms use industrial materials and simple black-and-white tiles to belie their modest scale.
Photographs © Paul Warchol