On the main level of the twenty-five foot high, steel trussed volume, is the multi-use living/dining/ entertainment/gallery articulated by custom designed, space defining furniture. At the east end of the space is the master bedroom suite, and study/library balcony accessed by an exposed stair, which rotates at the landing, and runs parallel, behind the existing longitudinal steel truss, to attic guest bedrooms, over the kitchen, master baths and dressing rooms.

The study/library balcony is suspended under the east end of the barrel vault and revealed from the master bedroom below, by a continuous radial skylight in the floor, articulating its separation while maintaining the volumetric extension.

The floor of the balcony defines the bedroom ceiling, floating asymmetrically within the existing orthogonal building frame, articulating its objectiveness and sectional variation.

Three large skylights were inserted into the south side of the barrel vaulted roof, providing natural light into the longitudinal internal façade of the space and revealing the classic building pediment above.

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The owner, with a family of 7, specified a dense program, providing us with an opportunity to investigate and reinvent unique design elements throughout the space. One of the primary design strategies is the relationship between the dining and library spaces around the double height living room, compositionally integrating the staircase, cantilevered piano off of the balcony, the art wall wine display, the glass and gunmetal wall and railings. In addition, the moving bookcase between the library and study, allows natural light to the powder room while providing desired privacy to the study. From the master steam shower one can see through the electromagnetic glass, across the apartment to Central Park.

The material palette establishes a consistency throughout, while maintaining the formal parti and compositionally rich sculptural intervention, simultaneously rendering the space as a serene, private oasis separate from, but visually engaged in the city.

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The mandate was to accommodate a family with four children’s bedrooms and sitting room, two working offices, master bedroom suite, living/dining, gallery space, kitchen/breakfast space with connecting sitting room, with both a sense of privacy and loft-like volumetric expansiveness, while simultaneously allowing the installation of a major modern art collection.The goal, through both the material palette of white Venetian integral plaster, stainless steel, maple floor, and white lacquer cabinets and the sculptural spatial articulation would both engage and counterpoint the spectacular 360° panoramic views of the city and beyond with a sense of serenity within a unique oasis environment.

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This public room, comprising entry gallery, dining/sitting, and living, is modulated by a new black slate stair, dark-gray lacquer cabinets, and a single round column. These elements, along with the art, all act as primary objects within the oak-paneled frame.

The perimeter wall, which reinforces perceptual unity throughout the apartment, is deeply recessed, with articulated oak columns integrating the black slate sills and the dropped heads with stepped capitals. The design reaffirms the possibility of a dialogue between abstraction and traditional architectural language.

In addition to a living/dining space, eat in kitchen, master bedroom suite and a private guest room, the program stipulated separate studies for the writer couple, storage for an extensive book collection and exhibition space for an important African sculpture collection.The parti was similar to Whig Hall at Princeton in that the existing frame was modulated by the intervention of a complex new object that accommodates both studies as well as the master bathroom and dressing room, while articulating the dining, living, gallery and book storage spaces. The kitchen and guest bedroom occupy the service zone. The use of glass block, oak, cabinetwork, interior clerestory windows, and slidding mirror pocket-doors, reinforce the transformation of a horizontal, cellular interior into a complex, dual scaled pavilion that serves as a house, office and gallery.

On a certain level, this apartment is the consummate summary—a totally sculptural and architecturally articulate series of interconnected spaces with a major view orientation, in this case north to Central Park, which integrates the art with the architecture so that the simultaneity and the dialogue reinforce one another.

The extended material palette, referencing a Cubist collage—wood, stone, integral plaster, stainless steel, and titanium—is integrated into a spatial hierarchy that is both subtle and refined. This apartment takes the enriched palette and the sculpted space and, despite all the asymmetries, results in an incredibly enriched and serene environment. The extended sectional modulation reinforces the sense of variation and disengages one from the perception of being in a low, horizontal environment.

The architecture is the coequal frame for the art, the furniture, and the view. Every form, every manipulation, and every carving is responsive to either the display of the art, the occupation of the objects, or the reference of the view.

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The primary frame is rendered in integral plaster, while the private spaces are defined in wood, separated from the ceiling by glass clerestory transoms that reinforce the overall spatial continuity, while allowing for contrapuntal, hierarchical intervention and programmatic specificity.

The material palette of stone and dark stained oak floors, stainless steel, titanium, anegre wood paneling and cabinet work, reinforce the spatial hierarchy and complexity, as well as establishing a sense of density and permanence.

The design fulfills the formal, object/frame strategy through a complex and composite layering that is both visually and psychologically resolved.

One enters a gallery, which opens to the living/dining space and views beyond. Off the gallery is in the guest room, library, maid’s room, kitchen and bar/hi-fi room, all of which are distributed linearly front-to-back. Off the living/dining space, articulated by the curved extension of the gallery wall is the master bedroom suite, which includes a dressing room, extensive bathroom and terrace. This space separated by a mirrored sliding door is meant to be a literal as well as an illusory extension of the main space.

The edited palette- the black slate floor, white walls and ceilings and back and white lacquer cabinetwork—intensifies the abstract reading of the space.

The grid used here is not a repetitive one in the typical Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman manner, but its spacing is varied to meet a great range of new and existing conditions, and this network of organizing lines is displayed quite clearly as joints in the marble flooring. Typical of the apartment’s complex geometry is the detail of the main rooms’ window walls: a cove for indirect lighting curves downward above a projecting shelf, its front surface cut back at a 45 degree angle and its soffit mirrored.