mrr design

May 1st in NYC   

the first part of the day was all work and no play 

but the late afternoon was just grand.  

One stop: Kips Bay Show House 2008. Here are just a few pictures.   

  1960's inspired decor or as the designer says "for the swinging 60's chic"

Image, Washington Post, May 1, 2008    

 Ellen Ward Scarborough and Pariscope Design

Two other blogs featured a photo of this room and commentary, Decorno and Habitually Chic, and clearly did not like the room at all, nor did the readers of their blogs, except me!  I have to say that I liked it.  It put a smile on my face immediately.  The room was fun, fresh and alive. The pineapple, constructed with thick, vibrant, wide-wale corduroy, is a sign of hospitality or welcome - so the haven was welcoming its owner home perhaps or welcoming the visitors to the show house?

Extenzo - very cool 

designer's initials disguised

 on pillow monogram

    

Image New York Times, April 24, 2008  

Philip Gorrivan Design

Stretch vinyl ceiling called Extenzo from France - the effect was fantastic,-

clever and unusual

Free Bird

Image New York Times April 24, 2008  

Jennifer Carpenter, Truck Product Architecture

The New York Times quoted a photographer who had just finished going through all the apartments and said that this last room with paper airplanes suspended from the ceiling in a loop pattern and heading out the window, "felt like oxygen".   Somehow I missed this - how I don't know, but what a shame.   I imagine floating away from this room in a total state of happiness.

just delicious

A wonderful walk up Park Avenue over to Madison to visit the Charlotte Moss Town House - delicious as Diana Vreeland would say - so much to see, floor after floor and then back east, to the Kips Bay Decorator Show House. 

It has been years since I trekked to the KBSH, but this year because of the unusual venue, Manhattan House,  I thought it would be fun.   The difference this year is that the event is staged in apartments, 6 in fact, rather than a town house.  So there is a "bit" of reality for the viewer.

I lived in NYC for 12 years, in many apartments from the East 60's to 90's over to the West 90's and finally down to Charles Street in the West Village.  I had a taste of so many neighborhoods - hard to say which I liked best - I know which I liked least!  So viewing this show house in an apartment building gave the what could have been the usual over-the-top show house a different dimension for me.  This particular building - a full city block surrounded by mature plantings - is quite a haven when you view the city through its windows.  It was a building that I walked by so often but had never been inside. Famous for its modern architecture and because it was the first of the many white brick boxes,  but this one was unique - it was the first modern luxury building built after WWII just after the Third Avenue el came down and it was designed by Gordon Bunshaft.  It rented in 1952 for $75 to $250, imagine!  Today the building is being converted from a rental to a condominium - studios start at just under $1 million; a 6,000 square-foot penthouse is $20 million - wow is all I can say.  I also enjoyed seeing and listening to the tenants of the building while in the elevator, lots of wonderful old New Yorkers who have probably lived in that building for decades.  So a slice of reality and fantasy all in one.