office interior design nyc
clare ferraro: we are in theflatiron district of manhattan, where i've beenliving for 20 years. when i first moved in, i had twokids and two dogs, going through elementary school,high school, dogs on the furniture, dogs off thefurniture, the whole bit. it never looked that cluttereduntil one day-- i guess i had been on vacationor something-- i came home and i thought, yuck,this place is packed. my name is clare ferraro.
thank god i hired a designer. it was time to get ridof a lot of stuff. and if i was going to get rid ofa lot of stuff, i wanted to make some structural changesin the apartment. laura mannes: clare'sapartment was-- it was too much going on inthe size of the space. all the energy was just suckedinto this enormous cabinet, which she had filled with books,because my client is a book publisher.
clare ferraro: it was reallythere as a media cabinet, i guess, and also astorage area. and it was very cluttered. and when you were sitting in theliving room, you had this overpowering feeling thatsomething could fall down on you. i remember saying to her, do youthink we could paint this or how do we fix this? and her way of fixingit was remove it.
it goes. laura mannes: we're takingdown a massive bookshelf in the foyer. that was a big concern. where are my booksgoing to go? you know, form followsfunction. this space is going to be usedprimarily now as an office. however, the sofa inthat room is a bed. we needed a sofa bed.
and i thought it would frameit out really nicely. clare ferraro: the emotionalthing that i wanted to come out of this whole projectwas i wanted a feeling of serenity here. the phase of my life that i'mabout to enter into is a different one than i was wheni was a young mother and raising young kids. so i wanted to have a differentambiance in the whole apartment.
i wanted to feel differentlywhen i walked into this apartment. laura mannes: we talked a lot. clare loves modern design. the challenge was to have thispiece of furniture accommodate a lot of these needs that thisother piece was serving, but make it streamlined and a lowerprofile, scale-wise. it's difficult sometimesbecause, as a designer, you have an idea.
clare ferraro: i won't saythat they were battles. i think we did have arguments. there were certain things thatshe would hold her ground, and i would think, well, shemust really feel strongly about this. laura mannes: she didn't wantto do such a large scale renovation necessarily. when i brought my design schemeover, i realized the best thing to do was to open upthe entry area, knock out
some walls. i felt it had to be doneto have the rest of the design work. clare ferraro: some of thehurdles were i didn't want the soffits in the living roomor in the office. i didn't like overheadlighting. i didn't think i wanted it. i prefer lamp-lit rooms. the one thing i wanted to keepin here, my grandmother's
oriental carpet. and i said, i don't care whatwe do or where we put this, i'm not particularly fussy, butthis rug has to come back in this apartment. she found my favorite piece offurniture in this apartment, which is the coffee table. that is my absolute favoritepiece of furniture. laura mannes: not that manyelliptical-shaped tables, and one of my favorite tables isthe saarinen tulip table.
and she's a lover ofmodern design. she got it. she totally understood that. clare ferraro: she advisedme about the chairs. i originally wantedghost chairs. she persuaded me thatthese would be the more practical choice. they'd do better inthis apartment. i think that's part ofthe fun of a project.
you have a lot of ideas whenyou're going through it or when you're pickingout things. but the real proof is inhow do you live it? the truth is, i havea very busy job. and i don't have time to gorunning around and getting the best object. and i certainly don't have thatsense of how practical and beautiful things can bemeshed together and both work great and look great.
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