art collectors' residence

This project is the home of two art collectors on New York’s Upper West Side. Located in the top two floors of a Mckim Mead and White building, the design merges two apartments to create a spacious domestic art gallery where home and art are intertwined. The spaces are strung in an open sequence around a library core, from the entrance to the kitchen with a free standing stair and living spaces in between. Continuous long walls enclose the space to display works from the owners’ collection: Tomma Abts, Lawrence Weiner, Franz Ackermann and more. Full-height, translucent moveable partitions can be positioned to provide private enclosures when needed without reducing the overall scale of the space. A material palette of stainless steel, translucent white Corian, blackened steel and walnut was selected and forms a quiet but sharp backdrop for the art. Precisely crafted details are expressed most noticeably in the stair’s diagonal connections, the door frames and countertops. Each is transformed into an opportunity to express the material’s capabilities and the beauty of carefully crafted detail assemblies.