Private Residence, New York City

Interior and furniture design, Sep. 2010 – Sep. 2011

From the penthouse on East 85th Street, one can see all five boroughs of New York City. By looking through the pentagram-shaped lenses of the Dodecahedron Chandelier in the dining room, the City appears upside-down. Each of these twelve lenses is a poured lake of acrylic resin inside a sphere, which results in a diamond-like jewel that glows in the center of the house. As this lamp causes a visual experience on an urban scale, every object in this home relates to a sibling in another space.

We selected pieces of 20th Century furniture that have become classics, and combined them with custom furniture of our own design. All of the objects are in dialogue with each other, and we grouped them to emphasize their character: next to a rectilinear object, we placed an organic shape; and beside a cold metal piece, we put something warm and tactile.

In contrast to the existing, planned architecture, we installed naturally grown live-edge wooden slabs throughout the home. They serve as shelves for keys at the main door, for books and candles in the living room, and as sideboards in the dining room. The slabs rest on chrome-plated cubes folded out of sheet metal or on octahedrons, the only platonic solids that can be bent from a continuous wire, made out of phosphorized carbon-steel rods.

The Piero Lissoni Extrasoft Sofa piles up like a mountain in the middle of the living room. Kids can climb it from all sides, while grown-ups can sit and lie on it to enjoy the views out the windows, or have conversations with friends seated on the surrounding geometrically sculpted pillows and loose chairs.

In 1971, Angelo Mangiarotti designed the Eros table, which we placed in the dining room. Two truncated cones carry a massive elliptical marble slab. For the adjacent kitchen, I designed the Amor table that has the opposite form based on the Eros’ curvature. While the Eros table is bulging outwards, the Amor table is curving inwards, resulting in a smaller and more sharp-edged top. We used the remnants on the long sides of the rectilinear walnut boards for the four legs, while we turned the two short ends into a serving shelf on the wall.

Project Manager: Suzanne Gehlert
Project Team: Luce de Palchi, Peter Dumbadze, and Sean Gordon
Craftspeople: Bill Watters, Don Thompson, Drapery Systems, Karen Atta, Markus Wetzel, Miguel Cazares, Wright Brothers, and various sub-contractors