Bridge For Design November Issue 2015 November 2015 | Page 98

TOP: A spacious sitting room with curving neutral walls and polished wood floor. The
luxurious room has a crystal chandelier and is furnished with a grey upholstered sofa
LEFT: An elevated view of a penthouse roof terrace in the evening with an outdoor eating
area and a bar. Further beyond are yachts in a harbour.

you could want,” Nick Candy says, looking remarkably settled in his library
armchair, although he is merely stopping in between gruelling flights. “Chris
and I were already living quite contentedly in Monte Carlo when this
penthouse came up for sale, but once we’d seen the space and the location,
we realised it had the makings of the best apartment in the world.”
“I can’t pretend that this was one of our easiest projects, because it was such
an ambitious one,” says Martin Kemp, Candy & Candy’s head designer. “But
that was what drove us on, because we wanted to actually exceed expectation.
We had the advantage of having designed several interiors for Nick and
Christian before, so we knew their individual tastes well - and, in any case,
they worked with us throughout, going along with some design proposals or
coming up with others. The sheer scale of the Belle Epoque proved to be a
challenge. I mean, I personally chose the vast numbers of antiquarian and
modern books for the library and that was no chore, because I love books. But
when it came to something like installing the 12-foot trees on the terraces, we
had a logistical nightmare: An entire lane of the road had to be closed off as
they were craned all the way up!”
“We moved in about a year ago,” says Nick Candy, “and now we spend as
much time here as we possibly can. It’s a place where we can work and have
meetings in unique surroundings. But it’s also a refuge where we can come
simply to relax.”
Work seems blessedly confined to the vast oval office where the brothers
sit opposite each other at streamlined desks that incorporate the latest in
communications technology. This is clearly the hub of an empire, and it
exudes the restrained power of central command. For meetings, there are
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Bridge for Design November 2015