The “devil in the details” here is really the entrance of this Lower East Side apartment building itself, a 750-square-foot lobby in a red brick mid-rise. According to Brooklyn-based partner Rustam-Marc Mehta of GRT Architects, it had to be overhauled “quickly and not look rushed or generic.” The brief from the client, an expert in architecture himself, was to modify “‘stock items and work with local craftspeople who could build with a myriad of materials.” It was a tall order. In essence, the layout of the scheme incorporates a vestibule with mailboxes, an entry desk, a seating area, and the path the elevators and stairs. Each area is tied together by the meticulously thought out placement of marble tiles, arranged exactly how it was conceived in the original floorplan. Arranged in a checkerboard of large and small trapezoids that nest in each other, contrasting white and gray stones are sprinkled with a confetti of yellow and red marble.
Wherever possible, Mehta introduced what he calls “zig-zags” to break up and align the various functions of the space, both structurally and decoratively. The custom made entry desk has the same triangle-shaped apex as the cantilevered stone bench. He also chose furniture specifically to echo these geometries—the Fort Standard patina mirrors, for example, emulate the on-the-bias cut tiles. So too does the half-moon-shaped chandelier by Alex Allen Studio, whose negative space seems like it could fit directly in the arm of the Papa Bear chair reproductions.
Walk through the full lobby on our interiors and design website, aninteriormag.com.