Former chair of Interior Design at Parsons School of Design Wid Chapman recently completed renovations on his family’s Manhattan apartment at 1200 Fifth Avenue.
The clients for this project were seeking to create a space that would be intimate for their small immediate family but also provide plenty of room for a large extended family.
The brief was to reconfigure and reshape extant spaces to defer to the apartment’s sweeping Central Park views while providing public and private spaces that naturally unfolded and merged, balancing the need for privacy with familial/communal living.
Providing space intimate enough for our small immediate family but room for an extended one, the project reconfigures and reshapes extant spaces to defer to the apartment’s sweeping Central Park views.
Color and materiality play central roles in this project.
The residence’s existing condition comprised a warren of interconnecting rooms with inefficient layouts.
The kitchen and six bathrooms were very small.
The living and dining areas had been overly compressed and separated.
The firm sought to dematerialize the divisions between these public and private areas while preserving the integrity of the rooms for each living purpose.
Optimizing the residence’s Central Park views was complex. Ideally, the entire west edge facing the park would have been completely open with the public program.
However, the client requested that the private master bedroom suite also face the park. Instead of creating a hard wall and doorway from the living room to the master bedroom, the firm shaped and angled the walls opposite the windows to achieve this, similar to arms embracing the space and views beyond.
Facing the park, the angled wall on the left side guides you toward the open kitchen; on the right side, it lets you slip discreetly behind another wall, this one faceted and sculptural, that serves as the division between public/private space in this area.
Behind this sculptural form, in the narrows between the two walls, a pocket door leads you into the master bedroom and the back side of the form, carved with an unconventional study niche.
The pocket door is minimal, providing the sense when opened that there is no formal division between the living room and bedroom except for the freestanding form itself.
In the living room, this form embraces a large blue velvet bespoke sofa, custom made to fit in the facets of the metallic dust-infused plaster wall. This ensemble anchors the living room seating area, which can comfortably seat 14.
At the other end of the space, an island form mimics the nature of the sculpture wall and discreetly marks the edge of an open kitchen area.
Designed for seating, the island houses a flush cooktop.
The kitchen’s oak back wall cabinets have retractable panel doors that close completely to disguise working functions within, including appliances and counters, the sink, a dishwasher, and a wine cooler.
The doors are finished with a special silver-embedded lacquer that highlights the wood’s grain.
When closed, they form an exquisite backdrop for the living area, interpreting the silver Venetian finish of the sculptural objects in wood veneer.
A passageway off the kitchen leads into another kitchen and prep area.
This has flush white lacquer doors and houses the refrigerator, freezer, a second dishwasher, a sink, and a cooktop.
Between the kitchen and the living room is a floating dining table anchored by a large custom chandelier.
Along the entire window edge in the area is a continuous window seat allowing you to casually pause and absorb the view.
The overall result is a grand living area that centers and wraps around a sculptural object and seamlessly merges cooking, family dining, feasting, and celebration with relaxing and quiet contemplation.
The point at which the two angled walls come closest together in the middle of the space provides a deliberately undefined entrance to a long, wide hallway that connects the living room to a media room and three additional bedrooms.
The hallway was designed to serve as a gallery for a modern art collection, each piece incorporated with visible intentionality.
A media room off the hall has floor-to-ceiling surface-mounted doors that, when open, allow the room to blend into the gallery hall, extending the public space of the living area.
The end of the hall leads to three bedrooms and two additional bathrooms.
The hallway ends with an angular cul-de-sac that provides entrée to two more bedrooms.
Throughout, the firm used features that offer flexible, alterable divisions between rooms, such as floor-to-ceiling sliding doors and dimmable ensconced floor and ceiling lights.
The overall design, which was completed in 2019 makes for an exceptional and artistic apartment, celebrating nature, family, and intimacy.
The general contractor was NYC Builders.