To free up space, beds, shelves, and a sofa appear to be built into the wall. To accommodate the gentle curve of the "unit," the architects selected birch plywood. A large window is opposite of the beds.
When not in use as the headboard, the large redwood slab folds down to become a desk.
Wenes and Lens conceptualized a gradation of white to gray hues for the walls of the 1,500-square-foot gallery into the 4,000-square-foot home, culminating in a deep gray for the master bedroom. The room is reserved for meaningful pieces from the couple’s collection, such as a figure they found at a market in Beijing and lamps by artists Wenes represents.
“Two-bedroom apartments are coveted in Manhattan, but the reality is that we are just two people, and the second bedroom had become neglected storage space,” Fontanez says. Combining the two into one reaped big rewards. “Now we wake up to a row of four windows and a variety of birds singing,” Russell says.
Although the built-in storage eliminated the need for a lot of furniture, classic items like the Eames walnut stool and Executive Aluminum Group chair, and De La Espada's 011 Atlantico bed.
The terrace off a bedroom holds chaise longues from Design Within Reach. “When we laid out the project, the eucalyptus tree was going to go away,” says Walker. “But then we thought, if we move the foundation a little bit, we can probably save the tree.”
In the master bedroom, a small, cramped closet was replaced with a wardrobe that is partially obscured by a slatted wooden screen that was built by Metalworks & Design Studio of Seattle. "The idea was you see through it, so in a sense it doesn't feel like a small space," Smith says.
The bedrooms feel like sanctuaries, as they’re much darker and enclosed than other spaces in the home.
A bedroom with a view of Manhattan in the Wythe Hotel.
Like the pavilion holding the public spaces, the structure containing the bedrooms is clad in glass on the interior sides facing the courtyard, allowing a constant connection to the outside. Rodriguez (with dog Lupe) designed the steel stairs leading from the mezzanine-level home office to the master bedroom below. The stairs were fabricated by Austin-based Steel House MFG.
Baumann designed the plywood bed frame and shelving unit in the master bedroom, adjacent to an exposed cinder-block wall, a new addition to the structure.