PLAYING to the GALLERY

NEW YORK REAL ESTATE STAR MICHAEL LORBER BRINGS A CACHE OF CHERISHED ANTIQUES TO HIS PARK AVENUE APARTMENT, MASTERFULLY COMPOSED BY LONGTIME DESIGNER NICK OLSEN.

- CELIA BARBOUR

LIFE IN NEW YORK CITY sometimes feels like a never-ending scavenger hunt, where everything from the latest restaurant to a brilliant new friend is a great discovery and days are infused with a sense of both urgency and play. Celebrity real estate broker Michael Lorber thrives on this exuberant intensity. "He's one of the most man-about town people I know," says interior designer Nick Olsen. "He's out to dinner nearly every night, and seems to know everybody on the street."

Surely home life would be an afterthought to such a cosmopolitan character. But Lorber is as passionate about how he lives as he is about the world beyond his front door. "I'm kind of a homebody," he admits.

"Serial homebody" might be a better moniker. He's owned two apartments and three successive weekend houses in the past decade-"an occupational hazard," he says-all designed by Olsen. He derives his sense of home from favorite things rather than the spaces in which they're arranged. "He is sentimental about what he loves," notes Olsen, who began his career as a protégé of renowned designer Miles Redd. "Whenever he moves, he wants to reuse his beautiful antiques and art, his custom upholstery, his carpets. We don't start with a clean slate.