Box clever

A client/architect's minimalist insert in a prewar Manhattan apartment block is a smartly curated ode to family values

- DIANA BUDDS

Victoria Blau is a modernist at heart, having cut her teeth at Gwathmey Siegel Architects and SOM before establishing her own practice in 2002. But when she and her family were looking for a new home in Manhattan, they landed on an apartment in a prewar building on Museum Mile, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (and with a view into the Egyptian wing's windows). It was dated, but generously sized and close to Central Park, where her husband likes to go running, as well as near her children's school. So she did what architects do best and embarked on a renovation. The resulting space, about 8,000 sq ft in all, brings a contemporary edge to a classical building in a manner that respects the original architecture.

When looking for inspiration, Blau naturally found herself first turning to the building itself. Designed in 1926 by John B Peterkin, the 15-storey structure features a limestone façade and an ornate Italianate lobby, with expressively veined grey marble walls, a checkerboard marble floor, and finely detailed mouldings. While she desired a space that expressed her architectural identity, she didn't want a complete stylistic break from the rest of the building, especially since her unit is on a lower floor and has a strong relationship to the streetscape. As she was designing the apartment, she recalled how jarring it was to visit Antoni Gaudí's residential projects in Barcelona and experience the artistry of his façades and shared areas, such as the stairwells, then to head into renovated apartments that did not connect to the whole. 'I felt having continuity was important,' Blau says. With too stark a contrast, 'the story gets lost'.