Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2017 / Winter 2018 Design Hunting i New York Magazine

RENOVATION DESIGNER Virginie Sommet BUILT 1888 BEFORE A Queen Anne townhouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant. AFTER Mod white spaces with a natural-stone pool out back. tHE GARDEN WAS USED as a garbage dump, filled with cement, glass, toys, wood,” Virginie Sommet says. “It took 85 garbage bags to clean it out.” That was in 2012, when she and her partner, Christian Frederick, bought this 1888 Queen Anne house in Bedford-Stuyvesant. It took a solid year of eight-hour days, five days a week, to finish the project, which required a whole lot of love and refinement—Sommet and Frederick are both artists, and she has her own design firm—but also a lot of lifting and loading. Why was she not intimidated by that? Possibly because, when she was growing up in rural Normandy, she worked…

 What does Sweeten do? TRICK OF THE TRADE “Don’t move the plumbing rough-ins. It adds 10 to 15 percent to the budget, and nobody walks into a new bathroom and says, ‘Wow, you moved the toilet!’” We like to say we’re renovation matchmakers. We help homeowners find great general contractors, and once they’re matched, we make sure projects are completed on time and on budget. We ask for references, research licensing, and conduct background checks. What about the intangibles, though? Once the technical measures have been met, the homeowner has to ask, “What’s my communication style? How have I been successful in the past when faced with a similarly costly and stressful decision? Did I work best with a person who was super-fluid or someone who was really structured?”…

 How do you open up a small space using color? TRICK OF THE TRADE “Test a new color on the wall from the skirting to the cornice—all painted out. When you try a small tester on a primed wall, it’s going to look a lot darker.” A common misconception is that dark colors make a space look smaller. Sometimes I like to make small spaces dark and create a mood. When a low ceiling is a challenge, we use darks to create the illusion of height. I do lots of the same tonal colors in different sheens: one color on the walls and ceiling and a different finish on the trimmings. It’s like infinite lines—you make things recede, which makes the space look bigger. What about floors? You have…

IF YOU HAD BEN HELLER’S EYE, you’d have picked 50 straight Derby winners, or signed 100 future Hall of Fame ballplayers when they were 17. “When I think of my old apartment on the Upper West Side,” says the tall, spry Heller, who is 91, “even I’m shocked.” In the mid-1950s, the talent he was spotting was Abstract Expressionist, and the art he amassed and later sold would be worth about a billion dollars today. In this living room at 151 Central Park West—where Heller lived from 1959 to around 1975—he had three Jackson Pollocks and one Barnett Newman. In the dining room was a Giacometti sculpture, a Kline, and a Johns. Also hanging around were works by Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark…

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The reconstruction meant that flexibility was available in a few spots where they wanted it. The closetlike kitchen and formal dining room became one open-plan space. Cotton hid the most identifiably kitchen-y elements, like appliances, behind custom-made cabinetry. Hutches that take their “The whole house was taken down—you can’t even say to the studs, because the whole thing had to be reframed.” RENOVATION DESIGNER & ARCHITECT Billy Cotton and Ethan Pomerance BUILT circa 1895 BEFORE A very creaky Brooklyn brownstone. AFTER Still a classic townhouse layout, but with modern structural underpinnings and an opened-up kitchen. iS THIS A NEW HOUSE? It’s hard to say. When the designer Billy Cotton signed on to help his friends Tina Tyrell and Ethan Pomerance with the renovation of their newly purchased Brooklyn brownstone, he figured he’d advise…

Where do you start when framing valuable art? First, do no harm. The second thing is preservation. Whatever environment we make for the work will probably be its home for decades, so we want to be sure the materials we use will, in fact, protect it. Third, we have to ensure that the techniques we use are reversible, so that, 40 years from now, the work can come out of the frame and be in the condition it was in when we installed it. What do a lot of people do that they should avoid? Framers should never mount works. You’re adhering the art to a board, and that’s almost always irreversible. If a collector brings us a work to be mounted, we’ll ask if that’s what the artist wants.…

 Why are sustainably sourced materials so important? When you see an exotic piece of wood, yes, it’s beautiful, but there’s likely a bad association. We’re destroying the rain forests. The jungles are breathing with life. I can’t imagine having something in my home, that I feel close to, that has that dark side. TRICK OF THE TRADE “I’m always nervous about small apartments—am I dealing with the elevator? Stairs? But that’s what’s cool about custom furniture: You can have things brought in and assembled.” But don’t you have to cut trees down one way or another? One practice I came up with was going into the jungle and digging the stumps of trees that had already been cut. Other large pieces usually come from trees that have fallen from…

F YOU THINK THE immaculate white shirts hanging in David Monn’s 450-square-foot closet, evenly spaced on custom Henry Hangers with their French cuffs perfectly aligned, are identical, you’re wrong. They may look the same—as do all the blue shirts next to them—but therein lies the difference between this perfectionist and the rest of us. “They are multiples of many variations,” Monn, a leading event planner, explains. “There are six different white shirts; they are all different fabrics.” Same goes for his jeans. “They couldn’t be just jeans,” he says with a laugh. “Different jeans, all made by Jean Shop. I have my fat ones and my skinny ones, some are overwashed, some are waxed denim, heavyweight denim, but they are all the same style.” Uniformity (or near uniformity) helps…

HOW DO YOU END up with a very discerning 13-year-old client? “I was working on a renovation at Salon 94 downtown,” says Adam Charlap Hyman of the design firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero. (Salon 94 is among the most in-the-know galleries in New York, run by Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn.) “And I was going to the house for meetings with Jeanne.” There he met Greenberg Rohatyn’s older daughter, Coco. “At some point, they were expanding Coco’s bedroom to include some of the room next to it. It was going to be this cut-and-dried architectural change, but I had brought a bunch of reference images and materials in my bag and said, ‘Well, we could make a whole little project out of it.’” Both Coco and her mom loved his ideas, and…

KEY Cleaners CARPETS HOUSE UPHOLSTERY, DRAPERY, & TEXTILES Contractors Electricians Florists Framers Furniture-makers Home Organizers Lighting Designers Painters DECORATIVE PAINTERS Plumbers Repairs & Restoration APPLIANCES FURNITURE CLOCK WINDER AND REPAIRER LAMPS AND LIGHTING TUBS & SHOWERS CERAMICS REPAIR WINDOWS Upholstery & Window Treatments WALLPAPER HANGER Woodworkers & Builders LOCKSMITHS…

KEY ALAN WANZENBERG ARCHITECT/DESIGN 333 W. 52nd St., nr. Ninth Ave., second fl. 212-489-7980; alanwanzenberg.com Wanzenberg combines the best of the architect’s and decorator’s sensibilities through his focus on craftsmanship. His aesthetic favors a limited palette of color and high-grade materials that create handsome and unified spaces. ALEXANDER GORLIN ARCHITECTS 137 Varick St., nr. Spring St., fifth fl. 212-229-1199; gorlinarchitects.com Gorlin sees the home as a sanctuary, to be built of materials native to the site and fitted with wide windows to take in the view. Trained as a modernist, he nonetheless cites Vermeer’s use of light and space as an inspiration. ANDREW BERMAN ARCHITECT 77 Chambers St., nr. Broadway, fourth fl. 212-226-5998; andrewbermanarchitect.com This studio creates airy, light-filled spaces and buildings. Recent commissions…

 What advice do you give to people when they’re contemplating a backyard? TRICK OF THE TRADE “Get a vine going indoors. I have a vine going up one of the poles in my loft. It’s taken a couple years, but it cost me only $4.50.” Design based on how you’re actually going to use it: Are you creating a play space for your kids? Do you want it to be a contemplative place where you can sit and read? I start by thinking about the energy of the space, and then I identify the anchoring plants: the hero tree or shrub. Then design in layers from there—two or three are enough. Evergreen shrubs in the background and perennials in the foreground to create a visual focal point. A “hero…

Amy Sedaris Writer, comedian, actress; creator and star, truTV’s ‘At Home With Amy Sedaris’ For scents, Aedes Perfumery is the one and only place to go—I buy what they tell me to buy. I get my incense at 45RPM, on Mercer Street. 7 Greenwich Ave., 212-206-8674; 169 Mercer St., 917-237-0045 For tableware, I go to Le Fanion, on West 4th, and John Derian. 299 W. 4th St., 212-463-8760 I have a Coco-Mat bed right now, and I like John Robshaw sheets. Four showrooms in New York, or coco-mat.com; johnrobshaw.com For carpets, John Derian, ABC Carpet & Home, and The Rug Company. I like natural wood floors, but I have to cover mine for sound purposes and because of Tina, my bunny. 6 E. 2nd St., 212-677-3917; 888 Broadway, 212-473-3000; 88…

“The wall paints were custom-mixed here in Iceland,” Bridges says. “I had to wing it—made up my own names for colors.” IF YOU ARE NOT A MICHAEL BLOOMBERG sort with your own jet, buying a weekend house in Iceland may sound like a terrible idea. But Sheila Bridges—designer,author, and onetime host of Sheila Bridges: Designer Living on the Fine Living Network—has been told she’s nuts before. When she gave up her apartment in Brooklyn and moved to a landmark Harlem building 23 years ago, “everyone said I was crazy.” That same year, she quit the Hamptons and bought an 1880s colonial on 13 acres in Germantown—where she installed horses, sheep, goats, dogs, a donkey, chickens, and a barn cat—and then, too, “everyone said I was crazy.” And, well, all…

When her aunt redid the kitchen in the 1970s, “it was all gray. I remember being so impressed.” DELIA KENZA FIRST VISITED the house on Waverly Avenue as a little girl in the 1970s. “It felt so big and cool, because my aunt was stylish and young,” she recalls, “and when she had her kitchen redone, it was all gray. I remember being so impressed.” Yet she wouldn’t have wanted to live there as a young woman. “I had my own style, and the house and I fell out of favor.” Nor did she take an interest in design at first: Kenza studied Russian history, went to law school, passed the bar, and married the artist and choreographer Júlio Leitão. They bought a house on Sylvan Terrace and renovated…

KEY ALEX PAPACHRISTIDIS INTERIORS 300 E. 57th St., at Second Ave., Ste. 1C 212-588-1777; alexpapachristidis.com Papachristidis pairs unexpected colors with classic proportions, drawing on influences from his globe-trotting youth. European textiles, classical architecture, and 18th-century furnishings all provide inspiration. AMY LAU DESIGN 601 W. 26th St., nr. 11th Ave., Ste. M272 212-645-6168; amylaudesign.com One of New York’s top designers, Lau expertly mixes modernist know-how with a love of the offbeat and eccentric. Full of color and bold art, her spirited interiors feel more curated than decorated. ANTHONY BARATTA 267 Fifth Ave., nr. 29th St., Ste. 1002 212-966-8892; anthonybaratta.com Baratta’s M.O. is traditional with a twist. Every room is steeped in color and pattern-on-pattern layers. He’s been known to put a cobalt-blue chandelier in an…

1. The legendary musician who owned this house in Queens didn’t choose it himself. A year after his (fourth) marriage, his new wife bought it while he was on an out-of-town trip in 1943, and presented it to him when he got home. 2. The decorator, Morris Grossberg, went all-in on mirrored walls and silver-foil wallpaper, even in the closets and on some of the ceilings. 3. Though he admitted that the exterior of the house was nothing special, he said that visitors would “see a whole lot of comfort, happiness, and the nicest things.” The couple put in this snazzy turquoise kitchen in the early 1960s. 4. He died in 1971, his wife in 1983. She bequeathed the house to the City of New York, in honor of her…