The Robbins and Appleton Building is a historic building located in Bond Street, New York. It was designed by architect Stephen Decatur Hatch in the Second Empire style and built in 1871. It features an ornate cast iron facade and stunning blue mansard roof.
Axis Mundi Design was called in when their client, a director of a global hedge fund who had just bought an apartment in the building and asked them to design a a luxury minimalist space with a backdrop of a neutral palette to show off his growing collection of young emerging artists which include Aaron Curry, Adam McEwen, Jonas Wood, Hugh Scott Douglas Adam Pendleton, Eddie Martinez and Sam Moyer.
Their main design challenge was to give the voluminous apartment a ‘nice’ scale, and to create a variety of seating options, for entertaining.
A muted colour palette was suggested by the client at an early stage in the design development process. So warm greys, taupe and greige tones were selected for much of the furniture. There are pops of colour in the clean-lined contemporary furnishings from B&B Italia, Flexform, Poltrona Frau and other companies.
The design was deliberately understated so that the art becomes the primary focus. All of the furniture and objects are new as the client brought nothing with him.
Included in the scheme is a concrete feature wall and soft grey wide plank floors with hot-rolled steel detailing, the columns are the existing cast-iron columns, all lending a nice materiality to the space.
There are lot of built-ins, including a rolling library ladder and LCD TV screens. The loft has a Crestron home automation system, and each room has iPod docks built into the walls.
The west side of the apartment looks out over landmarked Shinbone Alley, which inspired a Broadway musical and, fittingly, a song by the Spin Doctors.
What makes the project successful - is that it’s contemporary without being cold, and glamorous without being overly decorated.
