Step Into A Chic Urban Sanctuary In The Heart Of Williamsburg

When designer Cece Stelljes and her husband, developer Yuval Berger, purchased an early 20th–century Williamsburg house in 2014, they’d been renting a smaller residence in nearby Greenpoint, just had their third son, and hoped to renovate the new home to live in with their young family. But, “It turned out to be a teardown,” recalls Stelljes, who at the time was co-owner of Revamp, which fittingly had just won an Interior Design Best of Year Award for a West Village town house project. By 2020, Stelljes had launched Stelljes Design, collaborated on residential-development properties with Berger, and, finally, broke ground on that Williamsburg site. “It was the first time I’d design a town house from scratch,” she says.

You’d never know it from the result. Encompassing a 1,000-square-foot garden apartment, plus a 2,800-square-foot triplex with three bedrooms, an open-plan parlor level with generous kitchen, a home office, and enviable outdoor space, the new home has major curb appeal: white brick, black cornices, a pitched roof, and an entry courtyard with a newly planted honey locust tree.

Inside is equally eye-catching. Although Stelljes, now design director at Jeffrey Beers International, has been a Brooklynite since 2001, the interiors have a decidedly global air, with influences ranging from France to Brazil. In fact, the centerpiece, a sculptural C-shape stair, evokes the work of Oscar Niemeyer, whom Stelljes had studied while earning her master’s at Pratt Institute (it was a Queens-based fabricator, however, who pulled off the connector). High ceilings, oak herringbone flooring, and a black-stone fireplace nod to Haussmann typology. “My dream aesthetic is to take a gorgeous old Parisian apartment, add modern furniture and color. . .marry tradition with today—I got to explore that idea with this building,” Stelljes notes.

In the end, though, the walls remained white. That’s because the family never moved in. Even though furnished with her own vintage gems, family-friendly pieces from Anthropolgie, CB2, and IKEA, and eclectic artwork—some by the designer herself—Stelljes and Berger decided to rent the property, as their boys, now a tween and teens, are firmly ensconced in their local schools. But they may eventually call it home. “It is spacious,” she concludes, “so it’s very enticing.”

Stroll Through A Spacious Townhouse Meant For City Living

PROJECT SOURCES FROM FRONT: GRAND STAIRS: CUSTOM STAIR, CUSTOM HANDRAIL (STAIRWAY). VELUX: SKYLIGHT. BENCH-MADE MODERN: SOFA (LIVING AREA). LAWSON-FENNING: SIDE TABLE. SAFAVIEH: RUG. SPOONFLOWER: THROW PILLOWS. BIG APPLE FIREPLACE: FIREPLACE. MARBLE-LITE: MANTLE, FIREPLACE SURROUND (LIVING AREA), COUNTERTOPS (KITCHEN). ANTHROPOLOGIE: CHAIR, COCKTAIL TABLE (LIVING AREA), DAYBED (OFFICE). IKEA: BENCH (LIVING AREA), BEDS (BEDROOMS). JUSTICE DESIGN GROUP: SCONCE (LIVING AREA). CB2: CREDENZA (LIVING AREA), CHAIR (OFFICE), TABLE LAMP (KIDS’ BEDROOM). THROUGH ETSY: WOOD ART (LIVING AREA), VINTAGE RUG (OFFICE). THROUGH SALON DESIGN: CHANDELIER (KITCHEN). SCHWINN HARDWARE; SUPERFRONT: HARDWARE. KALLISTA: SINK FITTINGS. BERTAZZONI: RANGE. VENT-A-HOOD: HOOD. LOSTINE: TABLE LAMPS (MAIN BEDROOM). ROMO: PILLOWS. ETHNICRAFT: SIDE TABLES (MAIN BEDROOM, OFFICE). THROUGH REPOP: DESK (OFFICE). WEST ELM: FLOOR LAMP. STRING FURNITURE: SHELVING UNIT (KIDS’ BEDROOM). 

PROJECT SOURCES THROUGHOUT: PELLA: WINDOWS. S&B CAST STONE: WINDOW TRIM. KINGS BUILDING MATERIAL: FACADE BRICK. EDON COMPOSITES: CORNICES. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO: PAINT. ARJUNE DESIGN STUDIO: ARCHITECT OF RECORD. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING INTEGRATED: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. ADAL ENGINEERING: MEP. NEW ANTIQUITY: MILLWORK. PROFESSIONAL CONSTRUCTION GROUP: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.

Three’s Not A Crowd With This Triangular Table

Three’s a crowd? Not in the case of Tres, a table in two sizes from Alberto Sánchez and Eduardo Villalón, founders of MUT Design, based in Valencia, Spain, and Lisbon, Portugal. The round-cornered triangular top and bottom sandwich three cylindrical pillars, all in thin metal plate, to create a sophisticated contemporary silhouette. The name corresponds to both the tripartite structure and the trio of softly iridescent mother-of-pearl finishes: Opal Shell, Spring Shell, and Honey Shell. Through Saba Italia. 

4 Design Mavericks Transforming The Kitchen & Bath Space

Meet the visionary artisans blending creativity and cutting-edge design to craft innovative pieces for the kitchen and bath sphere.

Discover The Artisans Bringing Flair To Furniture Design

1. Lori Weitzner for Artistic Tile

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Product: Lola
Standout: Crafted entirely in-house in Secaucus, New Jersey, the marble tile, which reinterprets an arabesque refracted into a mesmerizing palimpsest, recalls the Weitzner Design founder’s luxurious handmade textiles and wallcoverings.

2. John Löfgren and Jonas Pettersson for Very Simple Kitchen

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Product: Very Simple: Accessories
Standout: Swedish studio Form Us With Love conceived a powder-coated or raw aluminum kitchen rail system that makes the perfect perch for accompanying accoutrements like utensil holders, hooks, a lamp, and more. 

3. Daniel Germani for Cosentino

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Product: Adia
Standout: The architect and kitchen expert’s new Pietra Edition range of Dekton surfacing takes inspiration from various Mediterranean stones, like Ceppo di Gré and Roman limestone, including this pleasing creamy-toned pattern.

4. Paolo Trevisan and Francisco Barboza for Florense

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Product: Arco
Standout: The Brazilian brand introduces a kitchen by Italian industrial-design studio Pininfarina, best known for high-end automotive creations, that hides a fun surprise: a secret cocktail bar that rises from a circular module at one end of the island. 

Wangen Tower Surfaces As A Bold Landmark In Southern Germany

Wangen Tower, a collaborative effort between two University of Stuttgart research institutes, pioneers a humble building material into a soaring, staggering landmark in southern Germany.

Behind the Design of Wangen Tower

OMA Captures The Essence Of Miss Dior In Tokyo Exhibition

Formulating a physical space for an ephemeral subject requires creative conceptual thinking. “We’re visualizing the invisible to some degree,” explains OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu, the architect who recently completed his first exhibition design for a scent, Miss Dior, the iconic perfume by Christian Dior that launched in 1947, nearly simultaneously with the French fashion house, making it integral to the brand’s identity. It’s a relationship that has been celebrated since 2013, with Miss Dior exhibitions over the past decade appearing in Paris, Shanghai, and Beijing, among other locations. Now, timed with a newly updated scent and campaign featuring actress Natalie Portman, Tokyo is part of the tour with “Miss Dior: Stories of a Miss” at the Roppongi Museum this summer, and for it, Shigematsu tapped into the rich history to create a nearly 10,000-square-foot experience that allowed visitors an in-depth look at the perfume’s influence, past and present.

Having previously collaborated with Dior on scenography for three retrospective exhibitions about the house—including “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams,” which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo last year and focused on the connections between Dior and Japan—Shigematsu, who’s Japanese-born and New York-based, saw this commission as an opportunity to “zoom in” on a very specific, but less tangible, piece of the brand’s oeuvre. After researching the scent-making process, that intangibility became a benefit. “We found the technique of making a perfume, building up layered notes to choreograph people’s senses, similar to the narrative of architectural design,” the architect recalls. However, unlike a building—or couture, for that matter—a fragrance has no relatable human-scale. “That was the hint at a direction to play with,” he says, “the sense of scale, color, smell.”

Thus, “Tokyo’s Miss Dior: Stories of a Miss” encompassed nine galleries, each a unique environment highlighting a facet of Miss Dior, from its bouquet fragrance (called Fields of Flowers) to the commissioned artworks (Dior Illustrated) and fashions (Miss Dior Dream) that launched in tandem with its editions over the house’s 77-year history. Most of the zones were marked by shades of pink, drawn either from OMA’s research into the iterations of the blush-tinted Miss Dior perfume formula and bottle designs or such elements of its ephemera as the ready-to-wear collection’s graphic logo from the 1960’s. “By enveloping or flooding the rooms with pink hues, we sought to convey the vibrant and surreal aura of the Miss Dior identity,” Shigematsu continues.

The spaces varied in size: The first was vast and unforgivably magenta, hosting an oversize, 3D-printed Miss Dior bottle rotating inside a vitrine; the next was quiet and pristine, a domed space with walls upholstered in embroidered tapestries and printed fabrics by French artist Eva Jospin, a Dior collaborator whose limited-edition fragrance trunk was centered on a pedestal. Fields of Flowers brought the museumgoer within the petals of a blossom, a fantasy created by installing layers of gauzy white and pink fabric overhead and along the walls. These curtains parted to unveil five stamenlike atomizers that filled the room with the fragrance’s signature jasmine, rose, tuberose and orange blossom top notes. The fabric could also be projected upon, adding a digital element to the environment.

Leading the visitor in nonlinear movement through nonchronological rooms that expand and contract, and some—like Dior Illustrated’s sinuous, pink-carpeted gallery of fashion prints by historic and current Dior illustrators René Gruau and Mats Gustafson—that literally twist and turn, added to the fantastical feel. As did the gallery-by-gallery shifts in scale of Shigematsu’s visualizations. In the Stories of a Miss gallery, he and his team enlarged the perfume bottle’s signature ribbon into an LED-lit pathway, while elsewhere, life-size displays of limited-edition bottles, couture garments, and contemporary artworks by talents like Haruka Kojin, Sabine Marcelis, and Brigitte Niedermair grounded the show in time.

But not necessarily in place. “The whole exhibition is like a lucid dream,” Shigematsu notes. “We created it to be a bit over the top in terms of color, configuration, and scale. It’s a kind of abstract landscape.”

In addition to capturing the “aura” of Dior and its fragrance, this tendency toward the surreal is purposeful storytelling. Both the experience-based visitor looking for photographable moments and the true aficionado who wants to dive deeply into the content could find a path through the show, its macro focus on a singular product allowing Dior to tell many tangential tales about its history. And with a penchant for craft, and a desire to highlight the quality of their own, fashion houses at large are keen for architects to design such highly detailed, immersive spaces that present new materials or methods, their patronage creating association with the cutting-edge.

It’s a far cry from the white box displays that have dominated exhibit design over the last 10 years, adds Shigematsu, who has also conceived recent exhibitions for Louis Vuitton, Prada, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. “Fashion labels are using this kind of show to imprint their brand but also destabilize it,” the architect says, who goes on to explain the commission’s personal advantages. “For me, there’s something exciting about the sense of expression and liberation in creating a non-ordinary world. I’m training a different muscle in my brain—I’m sure it will have some effect on the future architecture I make.” Call it the smell of success.

Walk Through The Miss Dior Exhibition in Tokyo

PROJECT TEAM

CHRISTY CHENG; JAN CASIMIR; BAIYANG KONG; TIMOTHY HO; FRANCESCA PARMIGGIANI; CHRISTINE DOPPLE: OMA. NPU CORPORATION: PRODUCTION. ANAMORPHÉE: GRAPHIC DESIGN. BRANCO INC.; JIN CRAFT CORPORATION; STUDIO 97: EXHIBIT FABRICATION. TAKENAKA CORPORATION: AUDIOVISUAL. RENO ISAAC: SOUND.

PRODUCT SOURCES

FROM FRONT STUDIO JOSPIN: TAPESTRIES, FABRIC (MISS DIOR BY EVA JOSPIN GALLERY). SANKYO KAMITEN: WASHI PAPER (MISS DIOR DREAM GALLERY).

Peek At These Homes That Embody Modern Urban Living

In metropolitan locales from Madrid to Moscow, strategically redesigned residences transcend their historical trappings and spatial limitations to tout the bright side of urban habitation.

Walk Through These Thoughtfully Redesigned Residences

Prague Apartment by Malfinio

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A Czech Functionalist–style tenement apartment in Prague was liberated from layers of anachronistic modifications to reveal its inherent light-and-openness, a quality preserved by grouping support functions (kitchen, baths, closets) behind an enfilade of operable MDF panels decorated with watercolor-y flourishes. The configuration keeps the L-shape space otherwise free-flowing, a tabula rasa for choose-your-own-adventure living that adapts to needs; for instance, the workout corner with gymnastics rings could later become a kid’s play spot. The sleeping area is partitioned via ceiling-hung linen curtains hand-painted with tones that complement etched-aluminum and stainless-steel details throughout.

New York Unit by Productora

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Floor-to-ceiling shelving powder-coated lemony RAL 1012 takes on epic proportions and myriad functions at the ground-floor SoHo loft. The steel unit’s depth was exploited by interspersing it with clerestories, nooks, and millwork so it could multitask as divider, storage, and sleeping mezzanine. Other features like terrazzo bathroom tile, a stainless-steel kitchen countertop, and wire-glass interior windows convey a more utilitarian character befitting the 1868 building, which is also home to an historic artist’s cooperative.

Barcelona Studio by Allaround Lab

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This studio inside a century-old building in the Eixample district, known for its Antoni Gaudí edifices, is a conceptual exercise that posits home as “infrastructure defined by its potential for use,” notes the local firm, which sought to distill the essence of habitation into its basest constituent activities: cooking, sleeping/living, ablutions. Thus, the 1910 apartment’s original rabbit warren of rooms was converted into an unprogrammed open layout—adjustable via sliding panels from a one-to a two-bedroom—centering on a white-box kitchen marked by a swath of ceramic tile that looks like a flying carpet launching into midair.

Moscow Apartment by SKNPYL

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In lieu of solid walls, two rows of pivoting oak doors separate this apartment into zones for sleeping, lounging, and mealtime, which can be combined into one single sweep of space—a configuration that maximizes daylight from the living area’s bay window nook, sheathed in tile inspired by those cladding the public areas of the 1952 landmarked building. A flower-shaped epoxy-resin aperture funnels light from the living area into the windowless bathroom behind, while custom furniture channels the vibe of a mid-century Soviet academic flat.

Madrid Home by Studio Zooco

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This semidetached house with deep 40-foot floor plate begged for an influx of daylight and better connection between its four levels, achieved via a skylit cutaway above the stairwell that acts as a lantern and a serene, reductive palette of pale oak millwork and white-painted walls. The same wood was used for functional elements in every room, from storage enclosures and the hearth to a slatted screen by the entry and a built-in breakfast nook.

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The quirky mise-en-scène of a creative couple’s cozy quarters reflects their yen for Wes Anderson films by way of nostalgia-tinged pastel hues—deployed in strategic color-blocking to establish rooms-within-rooms and hide elements like dropped ceilings. The décor balances fun touches, like the carefully styled (and stylized) accessories, with cleverly functional ones, such as a built-in cat-litter box and a kitchen island with retractable screen for projecting movies. The homeowners have a love of terrazzo, too, hence its recurrence throughout.

Create Harmony With This Clodagh x Marc Phillips Rug Collab

The stars were in alignment when Interior Design Hall of Famer Clodagh met Marc Phillips. The mononymous design guru and the esteemed rug connoisseur could tell they were on the same wavelength. So began a meeting of minds that resulted in a collection based on and named after the five elements shared across Chinese, Japanese, Buddhist, Greek, and Babylonian cultures: wood, metal, fire, earth, and water. Measuring 9 by 12 feet and hand-knotted of allo, wool, and silk, the variegated rugs, in multiple colorways, are subtly textured and patterned in loose accordance with their elements. Clodagh recommends specifying them to evoke specific energies that will fine-tune the balance and harmony of a space: Water for calm and abundance, Wood for growth and vitality, Metal for clarity and precision, Fire for passion and high energy, and Earth for stability and nourishment.

Fulfill A Sweet Tooth With Studio Yellowdot’s Creations

Studio Yellowdot On Their Deliciously Sweet Ceramics, Furnishings, and More 

Interior Design: What are your individual perspectives on design, and how do you combine them?

Bodin Hon: I’m more technical, asking if something is feasible. And I like to invent things, so there’s technology as well. I look at new materials and mechanisms to create different types of surprises.

Dilara Kan Hon: Coming from an art background, I’m interested in spontaneity and being aware of what I’m feeling: I feel like this is the right color, I feel like this is the form we should use. From the start, Bodin would say, “Prove it,” something nobody had really demanded of me before. It was a big challenge, but it taught us both how to discuss our ideas, how to put them together.

BH: We start with sketches or some material, followed by plenty of back-and-forth critiquing until we’re both happy. In the beginning, we did many self-driven projects that could sit around for months until we found the right solution. With clients, we have to be quicker.

ID: An early piece, the Jelly table lamp, is like a cake stand serving up a treat. How did that evolve?

DKH: One day we were making jello and realized we could use the same silicone mold for resin, which we’d been experimenting with. We ended up with solid “jellies” that we needed to find a use for. A lamp was the answer. When you touch the metal base, the light dims.

ID: You also use resin with recycled eggshells for the Hatch pendant fixture. Tell us about that.

BH: We discovered that used eggshells, washed and set in resin, form a thin, strong, lightweight matrix. The material is translucent, which gave us the idea of developing it into a pendant light. It takes three or four hours to handcraft the circular diffuser, putting the right size eggshells in piece by piece, kind of like baking a pizza.

ID: Eggs of another sort inspired the cylindrical Ova Pink cabinet, right?

DKH: I wanted to create something that symbolized my origins, the seeds from which I grew. There’s a traditional handwoven fabric called kutnu from Gaziantep, a town I used to visit as a child. Then, in a Hong Kong park, I saw the bright-pink egg clusters of an apple snail, and I merged them with my cultural seeds in the cabinet, which is covered with 540 handsewn kutnu balls. It’s about 67 inches tall—bigger than me!

ID: How did you come up with the Checkered bench’s attention-grabbing pattern?

BH: The American Hardwood Export Council commissioned “future heirlooms” from seven emerging Turkish designers. There were three woods to choose from; we took cherry and maple. Games like backgammon and chess are very popular here, so we turned a checkerboard into a piece of furniture assembled from CNC-cut solid-wood blocks. There’s a custom set of chessmen, too, so people can enjoy impromptu matches.

ID: Where did the idea for your Patisserie tile for Gorbon Ceramics come from?

DKH: The brief was to present a new collection at Maison&Objet. It was our first time working with ceramic, so visiting the factory with its giant kilns, clay mixing machines, and racks of hot ceramics was special. It was like being in a big bakery where everything looked colorful and yummy. Right there we thought, Why not treat the project as making baked goods for a pastry shop in Paris? In the end, we created a whole confectionery store, all from ceramic.

ID: What’s next?

DKH: We’re working more with eggshell and developing some furniture pieces. Also, we’re designing our wonderful new apartment in a beautiful historic area of Istanbul.

8 Artisans Crafting The Future Of Flooring

See how these designers are pushing the boundaries of creativity with flooring solutions that transform spaces into stunning works of art.

Meet The Artisans Wiping The Floor With These Innovative Solutions

1. Brian Coleman for Knots Rugs

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Product: The Getting By
Standout: The contemporary painter’s brushwork has the instinctual spontaneity of a flock of birds in flight, the fluid and rhythmic motifs transliterated from acrylic, ink, and graphite on canvas to a wool-and-silk rug.

2. Feruccio Laviani for Illulian

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Product: Symi
Standout: Gestural strokes in opposing colors intersect, overlap, and separate to create gaps through which the floor can be glimpsed in the Milan-based architect’s wool rug woven in Nepal.

3. Malene Barnett for Ruggable

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Product: Ruggable x Malene Barnett
Standout: The women-led rug brand teamed with the Black Artists + Designers Guild founder on rugs that honor aspects of African heritage, from Malian mudcloth to Nuba body art.

4. Athena Calderone for Beni

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Product: Metropolis
Standout: The Insta-darling turned designer juggernaut channels her New York apartment’s art deco detailing into ornamental rectilinear shapes applied to the manufacturer’s debut low-pile knotted rugs. Eye swoon!

5. Barbara Ghidoni, Marco Donati, and Michele Pasini for Battilossi

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Product: Celsius
Standout: The Storage Milano founders’ four designs, each in a dis- tinct weaving methodology, showcase iterations of a single pattern—see the ethereal ebb and flow of this Tibetan wool stunner, shown in the Night Lawn colorway.

6. Brigette Romanek for Loloi

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Product: Knox
Standout: As cozy as a knitted sweater, the interior designer’s checkerboard pattern blends wool, polyester, and cotton fibers and is GoodWeave–certified, ensuring adherence to the highest ethical standards.

7. Nikodem Szpunar for Moooi

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Product: Big Scale
Standout: For the Shape collection, the Warsaw-based abstract painter treats polyamide carpet as his canvas, generously scaling up his bold brushstrokes in blue ink, gold, green, or red wine colorways.

8. Phoebe Sung and Peter Buer of Cold Picnic

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Product: Embrace
Standout: Stemming from the Brooklyn-based partners’ family art session in the countryside, the anthropomorphic series includes a New Zealand wool rug outlined with a playful arm motif, as if embraced by a nurturing hug.

Leanne Ford Adds Her Touch To Elegant Cabinet Fronts

The company, which started as a one-man woodshop dubbed Handmade (now Semihandmade), switched up to become (as its new moniker suggests) a maker of craft-forward add-ons to big-box-store products. Gracing IKEA kitchen cabinetry with custom fronts was just the start. Now, with Semihandmade Cabinet, specifiers have the option to add American-made plywood cabinet boxes, too. The first designer collaboration for the range is with interiors megastar Leanne Ford, working in conjunction with small woodshops around the U.S., and encompasses a tight edit of traditional and modern profiles: Shaker, Slab, and Frame. All fronts are available in either an aged white-oak finish, achieved by applying a specially formulated nonyellowing whitewash stain, or painted a warm, creamy hue based on Ford’s favorite shade of white: Shoji by Sherwin-Williams.