“great design has meaning and consequence,”
says BKSK project architect and designer Stacey Jattuso. “What
we build, how we build it and how it comes to be used matters.”
BKSK has followed that mantra for some 29 years—that appealed
to their client for whom function and attention to construction
detail were of the utmost importance. The unit was originally laid
out by a residential developer, which had a cookie-cutter feel.
“When you looked at the raw space in here, it was very much like
a shoebox,” says BKSK lead architect and partner Joan Krevlin.
“And for such a tall volume, it had not terribly tall windows. We
totally re-proportioned the space, celebrating the north-south
axis but also creating intimate places within the larger volume.”
Entry to the apartment is through a long corridor that imparts
a sense of arrival. “We compressed the entry so that when you
come out into the broader space, you recognize the intimacy
of some spaces and the scale of others,” Jattuso explains. A
hammered blackened-steel mirror coupled, a leather shelf and
bins by Jim Zivic, also a runner by British artist Tania Johnson
set the tone for the décor. Further into the open-plan space,
a series of dropped ceilings and a segmentation of furniture
arrangements help create the variety of living areas the client
desired.
To address scale and proportion in the space, and to enhance
the views, the entire floor–with the exception of the sunken den–
was raised eight inches. The second order of space-planning
business was to re-situate the stairway, which in the original
design was tucked away. The result is a luminous stairwell that
channels light from the glass wall of the upstairs terrace into the
first-floor spaces. The stair materials–resin and custom-finished rift
white oak–and a specially commissioned blown-glass pendant
by Brooklyn sculptor Graham Caldwell were chosen to enhance
this ethereal column of light.
