Dorothy Parker observed 95 years ago that “you never get used to New York.” However, there are specific characteristics with which Big Apple residents will eventually become obsessed, much like frogs who drink boiling water. There are trash piles, tourists, subway vermin, and, most of all, tiny living spaces.
One Manhattanite was fortunate enough to land her dream home in 2004: a one-bedroom of 490-square feet located in the borough’s historic West Village. Although not quite as large, the house had a beautiful view of lush gardens and redbrick townhouses. It also was a place to rest during her hectic days as a clinical psychologist. After almost two decades of living there, it was the time to own it.
“I loved the location, and I loved the light and the feel of my apartment, always,” the owner declares. “It had just been done, you know, without a lot of personal touches.”
In the daytime, the island could serve as a workstation; in the evening, it is transformed into a social hub. “You can turn the stools around because you have the living room just there,” the designer states. In this case, the stove is made by Wolf, and Gubi makes both the stools and pendants.
To help her house enter its new chapter, the homeowner relied on the team of designers she had hired to develop her psychological practice a few years ago, Method Design and interior designer Nina Barnieh-Blair. “I had so much fun working with all of them, and it was just such a joy that, when it came time for this project, they were people I really trusted and wanted to work with again,” she says.
The key to Method’s plan was to clear the apartment’s floor plan. Although the apartment was surrounded by an array of north-facing windows, a bathroom walled off, and a galley kitchen obstructed half of the windows. Method Architects, an architectural company the client liked for its sleek and warm interiors, took the bathroom wall back and created an open-plan kitchen to ensure that a single light path could light the entire house. The apartment’s layout was now in place, and the design redesigned; it was time for Barnieh Blair to make her mark.
Barnieh-Blair, who began her professional career in the business world in London before moving to New York to pursue interior design, views her designs as an “emotional and practical response to a space.” “I was brought up in Ghana by my grandmother, and one of the things that I love and that carries on in me is that process of storytelling, this whole idea that a home is actually telling the story of the person who lives there,” she says.
In the case of this project, the story started to unfold when the client came across an enthralling photograph taken by an artist from Minneapolis, Alec Soth. “I’d seen it a million years ago on Artsy, and it just stuck with me,” she tells us. “And when we went to Sean Kelly Gallery to see it, I loved it even more.”
“You can always tell in a client’s eyes,” the designer says.
The abstract portrait of a woman before a colander of overly ripe strawberries–subsequently became a linchpin in Barnieh-Blair’s design—for example, the strawberry’s puckered surface was transformed into a soft, pink couch from Ligne Roset. The bright whites, greens, and gold were incorporated into wall weavings by Hiroko Takeda, a mixed media piece created by the Artist MyoungAe Lee, and small tables of Matter Made.