APARTMENT RENOVATION
5th AVENUE and 78th street, UPPER EAST SIDE,
NEW YORK CITY 2007

5th Avenue Interior Renovation

A SPACE WITHIN A SPACE; A COMPRESSED INTROVERTED LANDSCAPE


This interior design renovation in 5th Avenue in the Upper East side, facing Central Park works out several ideas about the city and its landscape, in an interior space. Departing from the fact that a complete interior renovation is generating a space within a container space (or a space within a space), the project took that premise to its furthest extent, considering that idea could also be twisted around. Due to the proximity to the Park, the project intents to reveal and manipulate the tension between the claustrophobic condition of its interior and the anxiety generated by the contrast of the openness but also contained boundaries of Central Park, which is considered a space inside the city due to its enclosed inland-locked condition. The Park may also be considered a building due to its artificiality architectural qualities. Therefore the apartment is split into two parts: the private area and the public areas become redefined as an interior and as an exterior relative to each other. As soon as one enters the apartment the space curves, bends and is warped by the curves of the ceiling and walls, the fixed furniture and the floor that motivate a reference to an opening landscape condition by compressing the space towards the spectator and liberating it in the opposite direction towards the park. This compression and opposite projected extension focusing on the Park activates spatial forces that manipulate the space by generating poched space within the walls, enlarging the figures of the windows. The figural condition of the windows then inverts also the space, since they are designed as looking towards an exterior (the living room which is meant to be read as an exterior landscape). The living room then is considered an exterior within an interior being worked out as a fluid space. At the same time and in order to project the space towards the park (as well as integrate the park within the living room space), technology is implemented in such way so that a continuous live video depiction of the park is reproduced in a large screen in between the two windows generating a landscape oriented continuous scenographic view. The ”interior” private part of the apartment follows progressively the motivation that the living room develops and the divisions between spaces are minimum in order to provide a maximum spatial experience.

                                                     renders DLO / Atilio Pentimalli