In this complete apartment renovation, we combined multiple units to create a sanctuary for a growing family above the canopy of Central Park. Here, ribbed walnut paneling connects the kitchen space to a light-filled breakfast nook, and adds warmth and texture to both, while the marble of the wall, counter, and floating bar lends a classic grandeur.
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This luxury high-rise apartment’s most impressive feature—the impossibly stunning view north toward Central Park through an expanse of glass—is also its greatest challenge for a designer. How to keep the view from dominating and dwarfing the space and its occupants? We decided on a custom mill piece that uses backlighting, texture, and depth to bring the living room back down to human scale and infuse it with warmth, taming the height of the ceilings and the chill of the glass.
Renovating this Chelsea apartment meant reconciling two seemingly competing goals: preserving the “lofty” feel of the space — the spare geometry and the high ceilings —and creating a warm and inviting home. In the kitchen and dining area, we installed dark walnut cabinetry and dropped the ceiling to create a more intimate space set aside from the dining room. The luster of the kitchen millwork is mirrored in the dining area’s brass chandelier, whose angular shape is softened by a warm color and gentle sheen.
Turning this high-ceilinged, exposed-pipe space into an elegant apartment amounted to choosing just the right touches of domesticity and luxury. Our approach is perfectly expressed by our treatment of the kitchen walls, where we left the industrial brick intact, but painted it white and dressed the lower half in wainscoting. An essay in grays, the kitchen is the focal point of this loft, which retains its industrial austerity with visible bones and monochromatic design. Yet with subtle brasswork and detailing, the room — and the apartment as a whole — shimmers with life.
