Before Klara Hribkova was a New Yorker renovating an Upper East Side apartment, she was a tourist. For two decades, Klara made a biannual arts pilgrimage to the Manhattan, where she stuffed her itinerary with the kinds of museum exhibitions, artists talks, and architecture tours that weren’t as readily available where she lived in Minneapolis. However, because her city was relatively affordable, she was able to purchase a loft large enough to hold her generous collection of art and books, many of its pieces sourced in New York. Klara prefers the work of self-taught artists, she says, and her collection includes Murano glass, folk art, and German expressionism, all sourced from galleries or online auction sites like eBay.

In 2021, after a period of renting an apartment in Manhattan, Klara and her now-husband, Heron Marquez, were ready to make a permanent move and sold their respective places in Minneapolis. Klara knew that going from her loft to a New York City apartment would mean having to place a sizable amount of her art collection in storage, but it was a trade off she was excited to make in exchange for a full calendar of cultural events in her newly adopted city.

After viewing a grand total of two units, she had a gut instinct that one of them, built in 1925, would be her new home, even if it was in a sad state: the apartment had a 1980s extension with various decorative finishes that added up to a postmodernist layer cake of shiny brass, gray stucco, fake marble, and oddly pronounced arches. However, where some may have balked, Klara saw potential. Behind the accretive finishes was a space with rare qualities, particularly for the Manhattan real estate market, including a surprisingly large skylight, private outdoor space, and multilevel setup, all within a ground level unit on the Upper East Side, no less. She made an offer that day.

To update the home, Klara approached local design firm BoND in 2021 after seeing their work online. Her overarching requirements were simple: a gallerylike space with minimal details and white walls where the art could dictate the environments; and a European-style kitchen with flat-door cabinets. Beyond that, she was open-minded when it came to remaking the two-bed, two-and-a-half-bath apartment.

Before: Living Room

After: Living Room and Walkway

BoND cofounder Daniel Rauchwerger poured over New York’s canon of modernist architecture prior to starting the renovation, particularly the Rockefeller Townhouse by former MoMA curator and architect Philip Johnson and 23 Beekman Place by Paul Rudolph. He found inspiration in the way their crisp structures and streamlined materiality let the occupants’ personalities shine. Klara was a fan, too. “She has this incredible knowledge of architectural history. She loved the modernist direction, and the idea of bringing that to the Upper East Side, which is more of a traditional neighborhood. But the design we created still feels new and clean,” says Rauchwerger.

Ultimately the renovation touched every space in the 1,675-square-foot apartment save for the heroic skylight. One of the home’s oddest features was its circulation: the entry arrived at a set of stairs that dipped into a small sunken area before leading down to a guest bedroom, and a second staircase at the opposite end of the sunken space led up to the dining area and primary bedroom. At Klara’s first meeting with Rauchwerger, he proposed shifting the lower level staircase to the opposite wall, and completely removing the other stairs that led to the dining and sleeping area. Now, the sunken space is a study area with a bookshelf that’s topped with a walkway; it forms a continuous path from the living room to the dining area at the other end of the apartment.

Before: Staircase

After: Staircase

By pushing one of the staircases to the opposing wall, Rauchwerger was able to hide a study underneath that peeks out into the backyard. The surrounding staircase, with metal railings that evoke the skylight above, is lined with built-in shelves that hold some of Klara’s library.

“We tried to make it feel like something between an art institute and a home.”
—Daniel Rauchwerger, designer

Before: Patio

After: Patio

To give the art pride of place in the apartment without making it feel too precious, Rauchwerger swapped out the flashy finishes with more restrained options: warm oak floors, black steel detailing, and large swathes of white walls that provide a backdrop for Klara’s pieces. “It’s a material palette that’s very similar to what you’d see in a gallery,” says Rauchwerger. “We tried to make it feel like something between an art institute and a home, and Klara’s art really helps emphasize that feeling.”

The less-is-more sensibility extends to the kitchen, which Klara uses daily as an avid home cook. Square floor tiles pair with sleek flat-panel cabinets, and, for the moment, two paintings by unknown artists and an interactive fuchsia piece. “Klara has that sense of collecting where you just live with it. It’s layered and it’ll change over time,” says Rauchwerger. “The architecture lets the art shine.”

And so what if Klara has to keep some of her collection in storage? The beauty of living in a home designed like an art gallery is that now, she can keep its spaces feeling fresh with new exhibits whenever the mood strikes.

Project Credits:

Designer: BoND / @bond_newyork

Builder: Davide De Angelis

Photographer: Stefan Kohli / @photokohli

Appears In

Before & After: A Chintzy Manhattan Flat Is Given the Gallery Treatment for an Art Lover