Classic Transformation

As a team, an architect and an interior designer take a blank canvas and create an elegant, traditional living space.

- NANCY A. RUHLING

CLASSIC DESIGN is, by its very definition, timeless. As such, it can be paired with any other style and still make a significant statement.

This principle is deftly illustrated by this brand-new condo at Boston's Four Seasons Residences at One Dalton Street. Pauli & Uribe Architects and W.R. Schroeder Interiors were commissioned to transform it into a cozy pied-à-terre that showcases the owner's art collection.

The three-bedroom condo, on the 39th floor of the skyscraper designed by former I.M. Pei Partner Henry Cobb, had some spectacular features, notably what Pauli & Uribe Architects Principal Juan Guillermo Uribe Rubio calls “million-dollar views.”

Its stark spaces offered a prime opportunity to capitalize on those views and create “exquisite focal points within the home,” Uribe says.

The duo's remodel, which won a 2025 Bulfinch Award from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, pays homage to the triangular shape of the building, which has rounded vertices. “The layout of the wood flooring was designed to follow the building's radial shape,” Uribe says. “Each room was visually divided by flush thresholds that allowed us to maintain the geometry of each room and space.”

Designer William Schroeder, founder of W.R. Schroeder Interiors, created the new views that give the condo the look of a 20th-century Parisian Art Deco salon. He was inspired chiefly by the style of French aesthete and art patron Marie-Laure de Noailles and by fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's last Paris apartment, which included what he calls an “encyclopedic collection of art.”