Explore 100 Years of New York City History at This Exhibit

The invention of the TV. Insulin. Yankee Stadium’s first baseball game. What do these three have in common with the Museum of the City of New York? They were all, for the most part, introduced in 1923. The latter, which was originally housed in Gracie Mansion until it moved, in 1932, to its current landmarked building by architect Joseph Henry Freedlander, is celebrating the milestone with “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture,” a massive, year-long exhibition showcasing how the Big Apple has been a century-long source of inspiration for storytellers in all mediums, from performance artists and musicians to designers and filmmakers. Its more than 400 objects have been categorized into four sections, such as Scenes From the City, highlighting noteworthy movies filmed there (On the Town, Annie Hall, You’ve Got Mail) from every decade and borough; At Home in New York, a cozy enclave to explore art, photographs, manuscripts, and other unique curios depicting the comforts and challenges of city living; and Tempo of the City, where you can find Carrie Bradshaw’s tutu ensemble from the pilot of Sex and the City.

This Upper East Side Renovation Offers One Family a Fresh Start

Design isn’t always just a matter of replacing and refining; at its best, it can foster renewal. When a wife approached Antonio Matrēs to reconceive the 1,400-square-foot Upper East Side apartment that had been the home she shared with her late husband and their three girls, the brief was both simple and emotionally complicated. “She wanted a soft and welcoming environment for her girls,” Matrēs says. “A fresh start where they can feel peace again.”

Matrēs began the renovation by rethinking the layout. First, he opened everything up: an entrance-foyer, bright and defined by a floating closet with skimmed edges, now flows into an interconnected kitchen and living and dining areas, all previously walled off from each other. A 60-foot-long console hovers in space around the edges, offering ample storage and crisp demarcation of space.

That move offered a solution to a smaller, but more crucial problem. What to do with a smaller bedroom once used for house staff, all of sixty square feet, near an equally compact bathroom? He doubled the bedroom by taking a bit from kitchen, which now felt much larger anyway. As for that bathroom, “it was used as storage space,” since there was none in the bedroom. A full wood wall of closet storage there (and in each of the other bedrooms) addressed that issue with ease, allowing the bathroom to better serve its purpose.

And more: like in so many New York City apartments, the radiators were old and loud. “I hate radiator covers, and anyway we couldn’t find a modern design that fit with the rest of the apartment,” Matrēs says. And so he designed his own. “I don’t even want to tell you how hard it is to design a steam radiator,” he laughs. “But they have a similar shape as the bathroom sconces and the other pieces custom-made for this apartment.” Everywhere, the effort was worth it. The formerly tight staff quarters is now, he says, a “palace” for the oldest daughter, complete with private access to transform, when the moment arrives, into her own “shared apartment.”

Until then, the four will gratefully share the whole place, filled with tapestry and ceramic pieces by Ukranian designer Yakusa, and a striking forest candelabra by Jan Ernest. “They needed a fresh start,” he says, and he offered that, as well as a little bit of healing.

Kenzo Digital Creates an Immersive Playground at the Top of Summit One Vanderbilt in Manhattan

2022 Best of Year Winner for Installation

The tippy-top of Midtown’s buzziest new skyscraper, Summit One Vanderbilt, developed by SL Green Realty Corp., is a 65,000-square-foot playground that immerses visitors in views extending 80 miles. Glass-box balconies and elevators project out beyond Kohn Pedersen Fox’s base building envelope, levitating 90-odd stories above Madison Avenue; an open-air terrace allows enjoyment of fare from the adjacent Snøhetta-designed café; and the three-level atrium’s experiential installation by Kenzo Digital utilizes 30,375 square feet of mirrors to create the effect of infinite space—an illusion amplified by floating reflective orbs, an animated cumulus-scape, and Clouds, a floor piece by Yayoi Kusama. After dark, the vibe shifts completely, courtesy of a light-and-sound show. Heavenly!

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Hermès Moves to a New Maison by RDAI’s Denis Montel in New York 

While physically just around the corner from its old iteration, the design of the new Hermès flagship on New York’s Upper East Side spans time. The ambitious fusion of three existing buildings was led by Denis Montel of Parisian architecture agency RDAI, the firm that has defined Hermés architecture since it was founded by Rena Dumas in 1972. Its central structure, completed in 1921 in the Federalist style as an outpost of the Bank of New York, anchors the southwest corner of its block. The adjacent buildings, former townhouses (one on Madison, the other on 63rd Street), meet in an L-shape encasing the bank.

The 20,250-square-foot store “is a union of New York dynamism and Parisian elegance,” Hermès CEO Axel Dumas says. The interiors take inspiration from New York’s Art Deco past and from the earliest Manhattan skyscrapers for a contrast of strict, angular geometry and more voluptuous, curved manifestations. 

The ground floor houses, on one side, salons for fashion jewelry, silk goods, and perfume and beauty, and on the other, men’s silk, leather goods and equestrian collections. The staircase leads to the second-floor men’s store with squared, dark-toned seating and blond wood display cabinetry arranged on a patterned herringbone wood floor that extends to the home collections area.

Ascending to the third floor, the curved walls of the women’s area host a large globe paying homage to the sun, both in its concentric circular geometry and its mimicking of natural light. This area flows into the space housing jewelry and watches, organized into alcoves for enhanced privacy. On this floor, in addition to women’s leather goods, is a masterfully crafted curved glass cupola that draws in natural light. 

The primary inspiration for the roof garden by Brooklyn-based landscape designer Miranda Brooks was a bas-relief designed from ink drawings by the French artist François Houtin. A cast-iron cavalryman, relocated from the previous New York boutique and recalling a similar figure atop the Hermès flagship store on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, resides in the garden.

Studio DB Enlivens the Top Floors of a Greek Revival House in the East Village

Designer Britt Zunino was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, her architect husband Damian in the West Village. But they’re now both bona fide New Yorkers with four kids, a Union Square loft, and a Flatiron District–based firm, Studio DB, founded in 2007. The pandemic notwithstanding, the practice is plenty robust. On the boards are some 20 projects including ones in Florida and Italy. Newly completed and closer to home are the top two floors of a circa 1900 Greek Revival house for another young Manhattan couple. In the East Village, the residence is near where the clients had been living but miles away in scope. From a tiny apartment, they came to this spacious condo comprising 3,200 square feet. “The property was bigger than anything they had ever owned,” Britt Zunino begins. But it needed work.

The site was “was full of dark and heavy millwork, and they didn’t want to do a lot of construction,” Damian Zunino adds. Fortunately, all four shared a singular vision: airy and contemporary with limited pops of color. Studio DB’s initial approach entailed applying coats of light paint, refinishing the oak flooring, and adding “targeted gestures,” in the form of unexpected wallpaper and knockout furnishings imparting individuality to each room.

Entry is on the lower level, which is the private zone. Newly serene, the primary bedroom has whitewashed woodwork and a pleated cotton pendant fixture overlooking a bedframe and ribbed wool rug, both in creamy colorways. Also here is a guest bedroom, an office, and a music room. The winding stair, its spindles and handrail freshly painted ebony for contrast, leads to the upstairs public zone composed of a living room and a library, separated by pocket doors, and a contiguous family room, dining area, and kitchen-cum-sunroom leading to a terrace.

LSM Modernizes a Multilevel Workplace in Midtown for a Financial Firm

Mid-century office towers are fixtures of the New York skyline. From the MetLife Building to Black Rock, they make up much of the commercial real estate in Midtown but are woefully out of date and ripe for demolition. (Even Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s 270 Park Avenue has met the wrecking ball.) Low ceilings and large floor plates make for dark interiors, while frequent columns and clunky mechanical systems constrict layouts. Yet for Donnie Morphy, senior director at LSM, these 60-year-old buildings have their charm. “They have great expressions of steel and strong organizational templates,” he says. “There are a lot of things you can’t get rid of, but there’s also a lot you can react to and embrace.” He knows this first-hand. Recently, LSM did just that at the ’60’s office space of a financial firm, creatively updating the interiors so they rival those in any skyscraper of today.

The client engaged LSM to conceive a workplace and a conference center across several levels of an International Style building. The goal was to promote interaction among staffers and give them a light, bright environment—both of which would be difficult given the 50,000- to 100,000-square-foot floor plates. LSM was familiar with the challenges of mid-century structures, having transformed offices in the Seagram Building and Lever House. Led by Interior Design Hall of Fame member Debra Lehman Smith and James McLeish, the firm has shown that with a clever use of material and volume, older buildings can become an asset for clients. “Simplicity is deceptive. Our design for this project embraces the complexity of simplicity,” Lehman Smith says.

LSM conceived a plan that encourages employees to move around, connect, and collaborate. The client envisioned various hubs spread across the office, forcing people to take different routes throughout the day and meet colleagues from other teams. At one such intersection, for instance, a terrace—furnished with Richard Schultz’s 1966 table and chairs—meets a pantry with seating by Space Copenhagen and Foster + Partners. The client also sought circulation at the perimeter, rather than private offices, so employees could have access to natural light and take in views of the city as they walked to get coffee.

Though lined with banded windows, the perimeter could feel cramped, with 8-foot ceilings, baseboard heaters, and steel columns every 20 feet. So LSM covered the columns in mirror, a technique the firm has used in new-builds like 55 Hudson Yards. “The idea was that you could demateri­alize the perimeter and make it feel like a new curtain wall,” Morphy notes. Adds partner Terese Wilson, “It reflected the exterior and the light and made everything feel brighter.” The team also carved out the drywall between the ceiling beams, going to the underside of the slab to gain over 2 feet of height. They brought the same technique to the conference center, heightening the ceiling wherever possible to create more breathing room and add alcoves illuminated by LEDs.

LSM employs such curves throughout to soften the building’s structure and 90-degree angles. Meeting rooms and stairwells are rounded, as are furnishings, like reception’s Charlotte Perriand LC7 chairs, marble-topped coffee table, and long ecru sofa. The conference center’s feature stair widens at the top and bottom to form “an elegant curvature that pulls you up,” Morphy says. It’s one of the many subtle touches that gradually reveal themselves to the visitor. “As you walk through, you see layers of detail that create the whole,” Wilson says. As Manhattan reckons with a glut of empty offices and companies increasingly favor new construction, LSM proves there may be life in these old buildings yet.

LSM: james mcleish; mario degisi; mark andre; nathan strieter; nilay akbas; sofia zavala; zibo zhou

fisher marantz stone: lighting consultant

ojb landscape architecture: landscape architect

thornton tomasetti: structural engineer

jb&b: mep

Island architectural woodwork: millwork

mcgrory glass: glasswork

commodore construction: metalwork

unifor: custom furniture workshop

structuretone: general contractor

cassina: chairs (reception)

svend nielsen: custom desk

knoll: benches (reception), side tables (reception, conference center), chairs (meeting room), furniture (terrace)

walters: custom stair (conference center)

stelton: bowls (conference center)

herman miller: chairs (conference room)

Tarkett: carpet (conference room, meeting room)

oluce: lamp (meeting room)

wausau tiles: pavers (terrace)

milliken: carpet (hall)

tile bar: floor tile (pantry)

viccarbe: stools

ultraleather: stool upholstery

campo­longhi: marble supplier

spinneybeck: leather upholstery, paneling

From Manhattan to Brooklyn, These Standout Designs Rule the Residential Roost

Across New York City, these bold and contemporary spaces showcase the latest in modern residential interior design.

AMMOR Architecture

Four-bedroom triplex

Gramercy Park

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Through a gut renovation that rationalized the circulation and layout of the three-level apartment, architects Goil Amornvivat and Thomas Morbitzer not only found space for two more bedrooms but also created a light and airy family home featuring rift-sawn oak built-ins—including ample storage, desking, and an open-tread stair—and a primary bedroom suite with its own terrace.

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Watch Ammor Architecture’s Walkthrough of the Renovation Process

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Only If Architecture

Two-bedroom town house

Bedford Stuyvesant

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Sitting on a lot less than 14 feet wide, the three-level residence, dubbed the Narrow House, comprises two lateral walls and glazed end facades enclosing an open volume in which co-principals Karolina Czeczek and Adam Frampton use a split-level section to create distinct spaces—the exception being a central plywood volume containing two bathrooms, closets, and pocket doors for privacy.

Worrell Yeung

Three-bedroom apartment

Upper West Side

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By removing walls and reconfiguring the layout, co-principals Max Worrell and Jejon Yeung modernized the prewar classic six, transforming it into a more open, light-filled home in which clean, minimalist spaces boasting new oak flooring are populated with built-ins, a mix of Scandinavian and American furniture, and restored historical details that preserve the residence’s original charm without compro­mising its 21st-century spirit.

Sara Story Design

Three-bedroom apartment

Madison Square Park

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From the moody indigo entry hall framing a large Chuck Close self-portrait, vibrant color and show-stopping contemporary art establish a dialog that’s repeated throughout the designer’s concept for this aerie, reaching its peak in the living room, where an Yves Klein blue cocktail table and pink Osvaldo Borsani armchairs are juxtaposed with vivid works by Chun Kwang Young, Frank Thiel, and others.

The New Design Project

Four-bedroom penthouse

Brooklyn Heights

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Faced with a new-build condo­mi­nium apartment and no distinctive architec­tural features, creative director Fanny Abbes infused the blank canvas with character by adding traditional elements, such as a custom marble fireplace, crown moldings, and pat­terned wallpaper, which she balanced with a more modern vibe generated by up-to-the-minute furniture, finishes, and works of art.

Atelier Cho Thompson’s Installation in Flatiron Plaza Takes on a Double Meaning

When Atelier Cho Thompson began designing Interwoven, the winning submission for last winter’s annual Flatiron Plaza Holiday Design Competition, the studio had just endured 18 difficult pandemic months. So the idea of connection was crucial to co-principals Ming Thompson and Christina Cho Yoo’s concept, which is a celebration of the power of coming together in a public space—specifically one in the shadow of Daniel Burnham’s landmarked triangular Flatiron Building that lends the surrounding district its name. 

The installation’s title has a double meaning. It not only describes the 450-square-foot form—an assemblage of crisscrossing powder-coated steel arcs and panels of colorful polypropylene netting and resin, which assumes distinctly different shapes depending on the viewing angle—but also refers to the fabric of city life. “We were inspired by America’s woven tapestry of cultures,” Thompson says. Visitors to the structure, which stood from November through January, were rewarded for coming together: When two or more people passed through it simultaneously, a synchrony of LEDs and original music played. “It’s a magical and unexpected effect,” Cho Yoo adds. 

There was more wizardry inside the little pavilion, which also won an NYCxDesign Award in the exhibition/installation category. A bench of post-industrial recycled cork offered visitors a moment of repose, while a wall of papers on a grid, backlit by more LEDs, allowed them to share written responses to the prompt “I dream of a world where together we can. . .” If your answer would’ve been to see Interwoven, as 2 million passersby did during its Manhattan run, there’s hope: Atelier Cho Thompson is relocating it to a New Haven, Connecticut, skate park in the spring.

For TikTok’s New York Office, Gensler Captures the Soul of the City

When TikTok touched down on American shores, i.e. Los Angeles, in 2019, it laid claim to the world’s most downloaded app. The same holds true this year, which is also when the company expanded to Manhattan, staking out 150,000 square feet for 1,000 employees across the five top floors of the 58-story H&M tower—fittingly steps from Broadway and its myriad dance numbers. Now, as then, the Gensler project was led by design director and senior associate Chris Mitchell, who translated some of the West Coast tropes to suit the soul of the city.

For the TikTok New York office, the play of the neon elevator lobbies of L.A. have been re-envisioned with LED panels in colors and images representing pizza, yellow cabs, and the Statue of Liberty. In the café, LED tubes abstract the subway map, while, behind the servery counter, climbing ropes reference “Spider Man successfully scaling tall buildings,” Mitchell says, adding that, “The boardroom is a circular space in a square building,” its otherworldly oculus subtly recalling James Turrell’s work. And everywhere, including from multiple balconies, are views stretching from the Empire State Building to the Freedom Tower.

This Waterfront Spa Offers Heated Outdoor Pools and Skyline Views

Governors Island, just a 5-minute ferry ride from downtown Manhattan, has been hotting up ever since the longtime military base opened to the public in 2005—offering concerts, yoga classes, immersive art installations, even glamping. The latest enterprise to join the fun on the car-free isle is Italy’s QC Terme, which recently opened QC NY, its first spa outside Europe. Located in one of the Victorian-era red-brick military barracks and designed by local firm Robert D. Henry Architects, with QC’s in-house team handling interiors, the waterfront day facility offers a host of amenities for stressed-out locals and visitors alike. Inside, they can enjoy an aperitivo from the bar after making use of the many saunas, scented steam rooms, water therapies, infrared beds, and free body scrubs and face masks. Outside, they can soak up direct views of the lower Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge from the lush relaxation area, its pair of heated infinity pools open year-round.