Bridge For Design November Issue 2015 November 2015 | Page 68

New York design project

AXIS MUNDI

The brief: Create a luxury loft space
to house a growing art collection

T

he 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,
had asked them to design 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
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Bridge for Design November 2015