Dramatic Reflection. We're all aware of the effect that mirrors and reflective surfaces can have on a small space. Yesterday, the New York Times Magazine featured the 1974 apartment design of architect Constantine Vichey. Originally designed for his father and stepmother, the small Manhattan apartment uses seemingly endless mirrors and stainless steel to a grand and dramatic effect. The current owner has kept the majority of the design intact...
Notice that the corners that aren't mirrored are curved, creating a cozy nook. Much of the furniture is Maria Pergay and original to Vichey's design. Read all about it in Illusions of Grandeur and the accompanying slideshow.
(Pics: Roe Etheridge)
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Comments (8)
Very cool this has been time-encapsulated.
While this may look very disco-tragic to some now, it's an era every bit deserving preservation as any other.
And to paraphrase "Wicked!" this is "the most swankified place in town." You can almost picture Liza passed out under that dining room table! ;)
The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles used mirrors and gilding and candlelight to much the same effect.. I'm with Patrick, the glam is fun.
And they HAD to put mirrors on the ceilings... the only way partygoers wouldn't do lines of them!! ;)
Even now, when all things retro are cool, the Seventies aren't my favorite period, and ten years ago, in the All-Beige Nineties, I liked this look even less, but affection is one thing & respect is another, and a handsome & well-executed scheme of any style is always worth preserving, so if I somehow came into possession of a place like this, I'd have no trouble at all adapting to it, instead of the other way around.
OK, that's not quite true: I'd probably have a hell of a time adapting, but the point is that I would adapt, rather than scrap such a coherent statement, simply because it isn't "me." It's the principle of the thing.
If, to insure domestic tranquility, I can eat my grandmother's oyster dressing--two helpings of the stuff, as heaven is my witness!--and still smile, I could sure as hell live with this. All praise goes to the current caretakers. Thanks for posting this.
Way more interesting than another "mid-century modern" interior.
Besides, these shots look far more Art Deco than anything to do with typical 1974. There's is a timelessness in many of these elements.
For those of us around....1974 was the begining of a Deco resurgence.
agreed.This interior is more of a art deco revival than a 70s, except maybe the blue carpet.
70s style borrowed heavily from Art Deco.
Loki, you're right. This isn't really a 7Os interior, even though it was done then. In fact, I have a 30-year-old magazine tearsheet of the dining room in a file that's tagged "Son of Art Deco", which is filled with Dennis Abbe's beautifully carved & frosted glass which seemed to be in every trendy restaurant & club for a while there, London's Biba store in its mid-70s incarnation, the early 9Os knock-off of William Periera's original 1937 lobby of the Esquire Theatre here in Chicago & the streamlined private suites that were added in the 198Os to the Rainbow Room by Hugh Hardy. Some of those were successes, some not, but they were all pretty interesting, which is usually the case when you get the double-vision effect of one style filtered through a later period's taste.
That's why I prefer the Modernistic--almost proto-fascist-- look of 193Os Vogue Regency, with its slick white plaster columns & Greek key moldings to both the strictly archaeologicist pedantry of the real thing of a hundred years earlier, and the tongue-in cheek "glam" cleverness of Jonathan Adler & Kelly Wearstler's take on the style today. Like they say, history repeats iteself twice, first as tragedy, then as farce.