On the apartment’s north wall—just to the right of the pair of Pierre Paulin Ribbon chairs in Pierre Frey Fabric, from Tishu, and a dramatic triptych by the photographer Chris McCaw—is a breathtaking
staircase, sheathed in painted steel and sculpturally corkscrewing
its way up to the second story. Set against a dramatic 17-foot
travertine backdrop that spans both floors, its swirling, cyclonic
energy seems designed to pull in anyone who comes near it and
draw them upwards—but before you succumb, know that the
second story has been entirely given over to the couple as their
private realm.
The clients knew they wanted this space to feel open, and said
as much. Berman’s response was: “Okay, but how open do you
want it to feel?” What he and Stone gave them—an entire wall of
frosted glass opposite the room-length window—would mean that
the couple was giving up the sense of cocoon-like privacy that so
many say they want in a master bedroom. But the payoff would be
worth it: natural light flooding practically the entire floor, and the
sense that their bed, from Hickory Chair, was magically suspended
in the air above the Central Park tree line.
“People don’t live the way that they lived forty, fifty years ago,”
says Berman. “That formality is gone. The kitchen used to be a place
where the cooking was done; now everybody’s in the kitchen all of
the time. Nobody wants to have ‘that room’ that you’re not allowed
to go into. I grew up with that room: a living room that actually had
carpet lines in it from the vacuum cleaner, and my mother would
know if we had gone in there because she’d see the footprints. You
can’t afford to have a room like that now, especially in this city. To
not use a hundred percent of your space is just a crime.”
“Luxury” is a relative term that can mean vastly different
things to different clients. For some of them, it’s all about finishes,
furnishings and fabrics; for others, it’s a synonym for space; for others
still, it’s a catch-all term for a showroom’s worth of well-curated
accoutrements. But for Matt Berman’s and Jenny Stone’s clients,
it meant combining style, artistry, economy and thoughtfulness in
such a way that they and their children could have room to live and
grow in the city that they love. As Stone puts it: “It’s a family house,
built for a family. Sometimes it doesn’t look or feel like a house with
three kids, but it is. The children really do jump on the couches.”
Workshop/APD, workshopapd.com; Jenny Stone, jgskdesign.com
