these three interior designers have been given a photograph of an empty luxury apartment they have free reign to design it in any way they please i'm naz nazawa i would describe my style as bold narrative and a little weird my name is darren jett and my designs are sophisticated glamorous chic my name is joy moyler when my clients come to me they're looking for relaxed approachable and classic no clients no restrictions just blank space looking at the space in front of me my first impressions are very much wow this is a box there's not a whole lot of architectural interest except for these extraordinary windows with an even more extraordinary view of new york it looks like it's a new build or it might be in an apartment building that has been recently renovated it feels very developer spec to me i love the geometry of the space the floor the ceiling windows of course this has a lot of potential to be something really spectacular and really cool [Music] right now the kitchen sort of takes up half of the entertaining zone and what i would really like to do is to essentially bring this wall in a bit further and i think in an apartment like this having much more of a wet bar look even though it really is a chef's kitchen behind could be something that would be very cool really i'd love to incorporate marble if we actually clad all of the cabinetry in the same marble thus creating much more of a jewel box moment first i want to start with the kitchen she's boring i want to take some of the wood and move that up so maybe we'll do a wood island maybe we'll do a wood range hood so that we bring that wood texture and that warmth but up and lift it up off of the floor and then i wanted to still warm things up so that's why instead of a range hood where you can see the stainless steel we're doing a wood clad range hood with the liner up hidden inside the back wall of the cabinetry i'm going to introduce a little bit of blue to really mirror that sky the rest of it i'm just going to kind of keep it the way it is there is clearly not a good flow through the kitchen the existing peninsula it just cuts off access because if you're all the way here over by the pillar looking at the view i don't want you to go all the way around around the peninsula just to get to the fridge so that you can have a glass of water or a refill of your wine that's silly so i'm going to remove the peninsula and replace it with a floating island the island appears to be just maybe a simple white corian product i'm going to introduce a little bit of stone to it because i think stone is much more luxurious than simple white corian material i'm going to paint the underside of the island just to create a little bit more dimension and a little bit of shadow line underneath the island i think that'll be a nice little touch to be honest i love these floors i think they're so beautiful they're like a wide plank oak but i love the idea of playing with all of the surfaces that are volume so the ceiling the walls and now the floors all being white i'm not someone who loves a wood floor there's something very very luxurious about softness underfoot so if we think about something almost like a silk for instance below something that would be very very soft i wish you could put your hand on this right now like i am it feels incredible i also think that introducing a rather bold color on the ground plane that sort of matches perhaps the sky that we're seeing is a nice reference point as well and can drive the design of the project even further what i would really like to do is to always think about the view always thinking about warming up the space what i would love to do more than anything is to embrace that feeling by cladding this entire wall including around the portal to the kitchen in a bronze mirror obviously it makes the space feel twice as big but it also makes everyone look so good i absolutely loathe a white ceiling what i would like to do is to also think about cladding that ceiling so we create more of a womb-like effect this is something that's very cool it is a piece of brass that has been oxidized and the more oxidation that happens on this side the darker it gets and it sort of creates this ombre degrade and what could be very cool is to actually have the darker brown here up against the mirrored wall and then the lighter portion up against the view and i would love to create a sort of regulating rhythm with the panels and just maybe up against the windows it starts to kind of kick back like a slight curve that maybe offsets the column here and everything feels very architectural and then we're able to actually clad the column in the corner in the same drive sienna so everything feels very considered and very put together in an effort to tone down all the crisp white so it isn't overly done i'm going to play off the underside of the island and have the wall just a sort of gray taupey color so you don't feel like you're sitting in a white mass you don't want to feel like you're sitting in an igloo [Music] we've got mostly very minimalist very modern contemporary clean straight lines and right angles how fun would it be to contrast off of these right angles and straight lines i love that it's just sort of this gorgeous arching snake but it also has structure bringing that into a space and making it feel a little bit warmer so this gorgeous little set of neutrals is my favorite set of pebbled leathers i'm thinking of using one of these very soft white or soft off-white leathers on the deseed sofa in the back so for the rugs in the space they're actually rectangles but then they're like floofy and soft and really comfortable and they've been woven to not have certain elements like there's actually holes deliberately cut into the rugs and that brings back that organic nature of what i'm doing with the rest of the furniture i'm using this wall here as an opportunity to define that living room space and first thing you want to do is you want to have a big comfortable sofa i always like to have a nice soft textile on the upholstery particularly the biggest piece of upholstery that often gets the subtlest and the most tactile textile i really do love a white sofa but don't be afraid there's a wonderful product out there in the world called krypton you can literally pour an entire bottle of red wine on krypton textiles and they are not going to stain i often really like to start from the architecture and the finishes right now up until this point it seems like everything is feeling minimal everything is feeling a little bit hard we're using hard stone we're using mirror we're using brass on the ceiling it could be very nice to perhaps offset all this harshness that we're creating with something very very soft and amorphous thinking about designers like werner panten from the 1960s other space age designers even to today someone like misha khan who's creating these very fantastical forms so perhaps you know instead of having a form that is very flat maybe it's something that is kind of wavy so if we think about fabrics perhaps having a tapestry or sort of pattern on top of it perhaps in a jean lorsat type of pattern which brings in a bit of art deco a bit of xinhua but it still feels very modern and still feels like it could be very cohesive in this space so the coffee table and the two chairs are very much a part of this sort of organic modernism of the space i specifically wanted swivels so that you could face your friends in conversation or turn out and face the view because that's such an incredible part of the space and then we were thinking of using really nubby cozy comfy fabrics on it i really wanted to play with different hues of off-white this sort of idea that they're perfectly imperfect together while they're actually white and like sort of delicate looking these are in fact very very much made for quote intense residential use so they're very practical in that way the actual lived experience of being in a space like this is very much about all five senses so texture and how it feels not just with your hands but also against your arms in the back of your leg when you're lounging all of that is so critical to actually enjoying the space and being in it i love the idea of keeping the rest of this volume sort of empty but having a circular shaped coffee table because a circular object is always much easier to navigate than something that has corners i love the idea of having a front-facing lounge chair here which also permits visibility clearly outside of these windows whenever i'm using a lounge chair i like to have an end table you need a space to put a glass down maybe to put your eyeglasses your ipad you don't need to have a sideboard i think it's a functional thing to do it's a place to put down a food tray or serve drinks [Music] i get really edgy when people fight for the head seat at a dining table i don't like that sort of hierarchy i think at a round dining table everyone's equal and when you're laying out a space the rule of thumb is the distance between the face of the table and the next object truly is 36 inches for comfort so with regard to the dining space this table that i'm choosing is by casey mccafferty almost looks like a little like wood monster so i'm very much still repeating this sort of like white on white on light on white neutral so we've got a very lovely off-white carpet on the white floors that have been painted and then the wood is very much a bleached ash or a bleached oak so it's very light but a bit warmer and that sort of adds some of that organic warmth and texture back in i really am into the idea lately of creating these dining rooms that are much more casual if you use them you use them if you don't it's also okay it's not an empty chair an empty table so if we had something that was sort of rigid on the outside that matched maybe the architecture of the box but we had something on the inside that was much more of an amorphous form we could create something like this and then you would have a table that could rise out of it like this i think it would be very cool also to have maybe some seat pads and the whole idea is that those could perhaps move around it could be very nice to think about it perhaps being in a leather i love the sort of citroen chartreuse kind of greenish yellow over here something that's very durable and i also perhaps like the idea of thinking about all of this furniture sort of melting perhaps we do kind of spidery forms but these might be something where it's like a fringe that kind of hangs down if we think about the plinth of the dining room that's built up maybe the cushions have fringe that kind of folds off of that right but i think we could do something a bit more dramatic in a nice leather like this for the rest of the dining seating both at the island the bar stools at the island and the dining chairs i wanted them to be really inviting and playful so for the dining chairs those are the monsieur oops chairs from piryovanovic i love what pier does i think these chairs are so cute so they're both adorable and upholstered so they're legitimately comfortable then at the kitchen island i wanted all of the seating at that island to be similarly linear but still playful i love the geometry on these chairs that i'm selecting i love that the frame really sort of sets a tone i love the use of the rattan caning against the black frame of the dining chairs because they mimic the framework that same sort of detail starts to appear at the counter stools but in a different coloration so that's a play off of one another the light and the dark and if they were all the black frames it would start to look very very heavy so creating a little bit of relief in the room comes from lightening up the material of the counter stools i love lighting i think it's very often an opportunity for you to use something very functional but treat it as an art form and a piece of art in your space both the chandelier and the pendants in this space are from the 2018 body of work from rogan gregory they're both amazing and it's actually the same material as the coffee table in the living room so we have things that come both from the ceiling and up from the floor in that same material i did pendants over the kitchen we've got this idea to stagger the pendants height wise and then also install them in the ceiling not exactly in a line so they're more in a cluster and then this crazy wild amazing big blob oh light fixture is deliberately oversized and meant to sit over the dining table as an art piece basically and then of course you can't only have light coming from the ceiling i want for some of the light to be rooted in the floor so i'm obsessed with any lee parker's pieces it's two points of light and she basically hand makes these pieces from clay and casts them and then adds the globe lighting afterward having stylistically an aesthetic where all the lights still feel organic and feels like of a similar shared brain even though they're by two different artists is kind of cool i love the female male relationships of furniture and decorative objects in a room with the chairs being very geometric in shape i think it was a nice introduction to use cone-shaped pendants over the table and then lighting over the island that sort of dome shape i think softens that space up i absolutely insist that all of the lights on all of my projects are dimmers because you know you've got to increase the sexy right you can't do that if you've got a bunch of 60 watt bulbs constantly glaring in your in your face so you'll notice that we don't have a lot of overhead lighting in the space i also am not a big overhead lighting person i think that the best lighting really comes from um ambient lighting usually on the perimeter or spotlights on specific you know points of art you never really want a light that's like on your forehead right now that's never flattering for anyone you or me but instead of doing a statement light piece i would love to do something here that really embraces the height and makes the space feel higher since we're creating very low seating and there could be something interesting about maybe picking up on this idea of the fringe cushions that we're doing and having fringe lights that come from the ceiling and that whole thing is lit within and creates a really nice moment you know imagine that in the evening just turning that on dimming it very very low and how that would look [Music] i love art i don't think any space is complete without it but for a space like this a new york vibe new york environment i'm really drawn to geometric shapes and much more abstract or geometric art no one really likes to look at themselves fully all the time i think there's something very evocative a bit mysterious about having the depth behind you of a mirror that reflection but in front of you is a beautiful piece of art and it's really about offsetting the modernity that we're putting within all the architecture so the artwork that i'm thinking of using is actually also ceramic so again kind of similar to the light fixture from any lee parker and it's by an artist olivia conier i love her work so much and i love femme artists who take up a lot of space with their work so big monumental pieces is really inspiring to me and that plays off of the casting of light so beautifully that it felt like i wanted to feature that in this space as you can see i am very much envisioning a lot of white surfaces a lot of white furniture a lot of white everything but obviously i love color so what i'm thinking of doing is using color by way of light and translucency by turning this whole wall and making them almost like a very modern maxed out size stained glass installation so when the sun passes through the windows and onto all the furniture and the walls you get color coming through the windows and that basically floods the whole apartment with colorful light there's nothing that is as simple to do besides paint perhaps that can totally change the effect of a space than the movement of a drape i think in this space it clearly gets a ton of light the view is absolutely incredible if i had this view i would absolutely leave it open maybe 50 of the time but the other 50 of the time i would close it and if you want to think about you know a late afternoon when the when the sun is very harsh you close that and then the whole space lights up almost like a japanese lantern everyone looks amazing in that light and you're in this sort of womb space but you're floating in the clouds [Music] i honestly love this design i'm very proud of it it was a fun challenge for me because so often i am using literal colors in a space so my approach to this space is really to follow the architecture follow the geometry of the space let that lead and sort of take it from there and it's all about how you want to feel when you're in a space i could really see this space as being for someone who really loves to entertain i think there's something about this apartment to me that feels very new york so perhaps it's almost like after an evening out we meet some interesting people and we just arrive here we're very lucky to arrive in this fantastic place and we're almost watching the sun rise over the water and it's coming into the apartment and we get these sort of deep shadows that stretch across all the furniture and really richens all the fabric [Music] oh i mean classic iconic i love it the high contrast for me is so major i mean we knew right like hello this is joy moiler people i really like how crisp and clean it is i think the scale is really nice i love the pendants hanging above the bar and over the island also i love that every chair at the dining table is an armchair i just never think to do that it just makes the caning so much more present in the space and i love caning it's a wonderful opportunity to provide something that's semi-transparent that also has texture that reduces the shine of other materials in the space i really want to be in this space i want to like sit at every single seat in here and play with every single surface really i'm drawn to what you did with the windows and i think it's very very cool and i can just imagine that light sort of cascading on my face when i'm in there i love that she did the complete antithesis of what i did which was very angular and it looks like a really comfortable space that you can just kind of hang out anywhere and just enjoy yourself see i love that so much great color oh thank you so much i thought what if we created something that was really embracing the sunrise really thinking about entertaining nothing's too serious nothing's too stiff everything's very low curvy i love this so much the blue carpeting first of all is just like very inspiring to me and the first thing i noticed of course is just the mirrored surfaces that you created i think that's so brilliant especially because it allows for a very democratic way of seeing the view that if i were seated as a guest because i'd like to invite myself over if i were on the sort of window site oh thank you um you know facing into the apartment to be able to also get a chance to see the view through the reflection i think is a really thoughtful way of entertaining and i kind of thought of this space as an entertaining space too so i love this i love the low seating because when you have a little bit too much wine you don't have to fall far off the chair so that is something that speaks to my heart sitting low makes the windows taller so that scale is immediately increased threefold that verticality and it's purely an entertaining space there's no television there's no bookcase you just go to the party and i want my invitation for next friday i would even like to see elements of nasa's lights here replace what's here i think that would be a wonderful way to soften these lines which tend to be very geometric and harsh it's totally steel this idea of the color on the windows i think it's so sick stained glass in a modern way and i'm obsessed with caning and still have never it didn't even occur to me but i love that and the whole notion like i love that you were thinking about the translucency like all three of our spaces i think really embraced like the notion of translucency like with yours the caning like i love the idea of the sun passing through it and casting like shapes and shots yeah absolutely and then i love the idea too like whereas mine it's about where the light lands yours is sort of like where does the light pass through and then manipulate shadows and then yours is about how does light refract off of reflective surfaces so i'm obsessed these are amazing you
2022-07-16