Atema Architecture

We’re deep in design on our project, reimagining the loft-like living and dining rooms with their sweeping Central Park views as a series of smaller implied “rooms” defined largely by lighting and furniture. This allows us to maintain the light-flooded beauty of the space and the connection to the huge eastern and southern views throughout while providing a range of more intimate and inviting places for the owners and their grown children and friends to enjoy.

The large south-facing kitchen is being transformed with a lighter material palette, more discreet but ample storage, and a more functional breakfast area defined by a small peninsula extension of the main counter, with adjacent coffee/breakfast station.

We’re also reworking the primary suite to maintain its big park view and connection to its terrace, while creating separate defined areas for sleeping and reading/relaxing/working, and making the primary bathroom lighter and more open, with lots of clean hidden storage and a discreet high transom to pull in daylight.

Yard work…Stone yard visits are important parts of many projects to explore material options with our clients, go over the stone fabrication and installation process, and select specific slabs.

In this case, our clients for our project, & Nikola Barisic, introduced me to a yard I hadn’t worked with before - , run by a friend of theirs, and I was impressed by the extent of their fabrication abilities and machinery they’ve invested in to make this possible. It also turns out their company did much of the stone work for Grand Central Terminal back in 1913 and later the Empire State Building, so they bring serious old school expertise to the table too!

High plains drifters…I went out to meet our client and builder in northern Nebraska to walk the land and select the exact location and orientation of our project. This turned out to be over fifty feet closer to the canyon from where we’d originally planned it, so it’ll now be tucked behind a small slope at the edge of the high prairie, allowing the house to nestle into a small flat area just before the cliff drops steeply to the river 250 feet below.
To help in this siting process, Jeremy, our builder, brought in a boom truck so we could experience what the future elevated deck would feel like and optimize its location. That was a little adventure for someone who doesn’t always love heights, but absolutely valuable, and the views…!

Lush life: sharing a few snaps of the new light- and plant-filled offices we recently completed for Incandescent just off Madison Square Park.

Tonight was a design show double header to see both Nina Seirafi’s meticulously crafted new furniture collection at Ralph Pucci and the otherworldly beauty of Apparatus’ studio.

I’ve had the privilege of working with Nina, and her Lava coffee table - with its solid carved lava stone top - is a discreetly elegant tour de force that anchors a great collection of seating and tables that marries elemental geologic forms with high craft.

Entering the Apparatus showroom/design studio is a trip to another universe, an immersive series of spaces with their distinctive lighting and furniture woven throughout the narrative, all also highlighting the astonishing range of finishes they’ve developed.