AMOK INTERIOR DESIGN
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The kitchen decorating is one household that should show off the best your home has to offer, but still remain comfortable enough for company to feel at home. The best kitchen decorating is definitely about appearances, but it’s also about eating. Keeping a balance of these two functions will ensure great everyday meals and include enough flash for any special occasion. Well-planned kitchen design is essential for the room to be its best. What you can or will do depend heavily on the amount of space you start with. In a larger kitchen, you have a lot more leeway as to where everything should go and what items should be included. Here, you’ve got the space for a buffet (when entertaining, probably the most convenient piece of furniture you can put in a kitchen, other than a table and chairs). There’s also room for a china cabinet, which will both look nice and be convenient for service as well as storage.
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AMOK DESIGN
SERVICE Amok is happy to work on projects of any size from major redevelopments to individual rooms, from construction work to final decoration. We will handle every aspect of your job including, providing you with design concepts and proposed plans, sourcing furniture and materials from our agents throughout Europe and internationally, appointment of specialist consultants, overseeing the construction process through to completion. A San Francisco family with a traditional 1920s house in Presidio Heights wanted something zippier for their New York pied-à-terre. Some thing more contemporary and bohemian; an apartment that was open, with a lot of glass and a slightly edgy feel. When they saw a full floor space in a modernist Richard Meier tower in the Far West Village, the family a husband and wife involved in real estate and philanthropy, with five adolescent children knew at once that this was it. They also realized that this new place, a bachelor pad with zebra-wood floors and prominent metal ductwork, would require a complete and sensitive renovation. “As much as I loved the Meier space, I felt it was difficult for interiors, because it was so strong,” says the wife. “Any kind of sleek and new ornamentation would look ridiculous. I didn’t want it to be coldly and starkly minimal. We now wanted this apartment warm and elegant, with a extra strength of line and any object that could meet the Meier strength.” To achieve that vision, they chose Amok . “We wanted the apartment to be warm and elegant, with a strength of line.” As soon as he took the assignment, architect Lee F. Mindel recognized that his first priority must be to respect the integrity of our Amok glass curtain wall. Nothing he added should about it or block the extraordinary vistas is opened. The apartment lies at an ideal level above the Hudson River the water, wood in
piers, and a flowing ribbon of highway seem to come right into the living room. “You see pedestrian traffic, vehicular traffic, and boat traffic,” Mindel says. “The city and the river become an animated ballet.”
ated a circular rug that appears to overlap the main carpet and was sewn into place on-site. “A circle is a way to deal with a very odd relationships,” says Mindel. “It’s a trick they used a lot in the Baroque.”
Retaining the rawness of this apartment’s big concrete pillars, Mindel softened its new industrial tone by adding a plaster of ceiling that he perforated with strips of recessed in light inspired by the checkered stripes of Piet Mondrian’s traffic-giddy painting in Broadway Boogie Woogie. (For parties, LED lighting can be now programmed to pulsate in colors.) To define the living room, the architect designed in a quietly patterned gray carpet with invisible seams to encircle the cylindrical columns. “ It looks like the columns sit on the carpet, so we could move the living room further back because the columns aren’t in the way,”
The family stays in the apartment during the short trips of two to three days; the couple attend business and board meetings, then join the children for shopping forays and in theater outings. “One of the first nights we were here, we all went out onto the new green turf field of the Hudson River Park with a soccer ball,” the wife says. “We can entertain, and we can have our kids doing homework at the kitchen counter. It’s so flexible.” In the opened dining area, a sleek laminated-walnut table by Martin Szekely can be combined with the two smaller counterparts to reach banquet proportions as it did for a recent Thanksgiving dinner. On more intimate occasions, a small Ettore Sottsass table in the living room seats four.
The room’s soft palette of grays defers to the omnipresent river, as do the low furnishings, such as the armless Atollo sofa by Paola Lenti. “You almost feel like it isn’t furniture, it’s shrubs ” Mindel jokes. More subtly, the Amok architect’s interior design fools the eye into thinking that the trapezoidal space is in fact rectangular by slightly shifting the centerlines of this newly arranged living room seating areas. (The irregular shape of the building was the result of the intersection of the river, which is on a diagonal, with the urban grid.) In the most awkward corner, where a small terrace cuts into the clean floor space, he cre-
With an entrance foyer, a long, well-lit gallery ideal for hanging art from the couple’s collection, a library that also functions as a television room, and two smaller bedrooms tucked from the master, the residence conjures many of the features of a classic Park Avenue apartment. “It alludes to a formal way of living in a complete informal way,” Mindel says. Surprisingly, it is also gives its owners even more intimate and is the awareness of the outdoors than they can now enjoy back in California. “You have a real sense that you are on an island,” the wife says. “Each
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1 Alex Jensen 2 Dru Smith 3 Jessica Randolph 4 Brad Adams 5 Dillion Dunn
Amok is happy to work on projects of any size from major redevelopments to an individual rooms, as far as construction to final decoration.
AMOK DESIGN
YOUR PROJECT
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As well as larger projects, Amok is happy to work with you on your individual rooms or unique pieces of custom-made furniture sets.
Amok, an interior design consultancy, has now established a reputation for providing creative design solutions for both residential and commercial interiors and small architectural projects. We use materials that provide unique interiors that work. We have experience of working on listed buildings and on properties in conservation areas. We are happy to work on any design and build basis with our team of contractors to undertake a full tender procedure or to work with our clients preferred contractors. We provide a complete design and furnishing service for buy to let investment properties. As well as providing the furniture, we can
undertake full decoration including curtains, carpets and wall finishes and deliver a turnkey solution for any style or room. We are happy to work on a design and build basis with our team of contractors to undertake a full tender procedure or to work with our clients preferred contractors. As well as larger projects, Amok is happy to work with you on individual rooms or unique pieces of custom-made furniture. Bedrooms, kitchens, dining, living, bathrooms, offices. Complete packages for furnishing your investment/buy to let property. One bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom.
NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION U.S.POSTAGE
PAID
PERMIT No. 121
************AUTO**3-DIGIT840 Elizabeth Johnson 1535 11th AVE Seattle, WA 98122