Tour this $3.545 million “green” penthouse furnished completely from Ikea
High wedding season is reason enough for a show house dubbed “Newlywed Nest,” sponsored by Bride’s magazine and designed by top New York residential designer, Inson Dubois Wood, using furniture and lighting from Ikea.
These days, New York real estate developers use social events to market living spaces, like this $3.545 million three-story penthouse in Manhattan’s trendy East Village. The condo, PH2A at 311 East 11th St., is open for public tours on weekends between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. until May 22, 2010.
Even better, we are pleased to give you a 24/7 armchair tour of the 2,000-square-foot interior space — plus a peek at the view from the terrace of the “eco-luxury” building.
Best of all is the opportunity to chat with Inson Wood to get his thoughts and see which Ikea pieces he picked. He has been featured in Architectural Digest and designed a living room at last Fall’s Inspired Designs Showhouse. It took Wood and his staff about a month to pull the space together. “I wanted to use neutral colors with splashes of red and dramatic art [supplied by Inson Dubois Wood] to activate the spaces,” he explains. “I tell clients not to be afraid of using color. If you’re hesitant, try applying a paint color as an accent wall.” For this project, a palette of Benjamin Moore’s Natura no-VOC paints were used.
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“With young couples,” the designer believes, “the biggest challenge in sharing a space is editing out things while still having places to store your favorite belongings out of sight from your partner.” That’s why storage pieces (like the living room wall unit shown in the photo below) become especially important.
The penthouse has an open plan. On the main south-facing interior wall, one staircase goes up to the sun room and terrace while another goes down to the bedroom level. The pale paint (November Skies) unifies that wall on all three levels. In the dining room, a dramatic bronze-tone Venetian plaster accent wall was created by Reda Briki. Venetian plaster is a green material and the textured surface in that space works like a piece of art.
Red and white shelving helps create a visual border between the living and dining rooms on the narrow kitchen wall. The table is Ikea’s Stornas matched with their Bernhard leather chairs.
The kitchen was outfitted with a fully recyclable Liebherr refrigerator (other kitchen fixtures were supplied by the builder).
An oil painting by New York artist Aleksander Betko bolsters the young, happy mood of the apartment.
In the master bedroom, a diptych by New York artist Michael Dickey over the bed, underscores the urban theme. Black-on-white print fabric, from Ikea, is used throughout the apartment for draperies and accent pillows.
Isn’t this romantic? Blow ups of photos from the “wedding” are used to decorate the long entrance hallway into the bedroom. These fill the space dramatically and look much cleaner and more artistic than the usual walls of small photos. Part of the design, Wood says, “is a bringing together of two viewpoints,” which any wedding does.
For the media room, Wood chose posh- looking Besta Burs media cabinets. The black and white print draperies were made from a Ikea fabric similar to the one used in the living room, but in another colorway.
Using Natura “Ruby Red” for the powder room makes a bold, romantic statement echoed by an abstract painting by Roxanne Rossi.
The penthouse sun room opens out onto the terrace. There Wood used three pairs of Solig solar lamps, a hot item on the Ikea Fans site.
The enormous terrace offers spectacular, panoramic city views and is the same size as the indoor space. Umbrellas shade some tables on one end and in the center, facing the sun room doors, a huge sectional screams “party” from every cushion.
