When Kelly Met Gursky

Walls on wheels create surprising juxtapositions of blue-chip art at a Gluckman Mayner loft in New York

Craig Kellogg -- Interior Design, 8/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Designing museums dedicated to Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Georgia O'Keeffe—along with dozens of commercial galleries—Richard Gluckman has developed strong views on the relationship of art to interiors, artists to architects. "No artist," he says definitively, "wants to conform to any architect's idea of what to do."

But what's a design without ideas?

Gluckman is on his feet in the perfectly composed living area of a glamorous New York pied-à-terre that Gluckman Mayner Architects designed for a collector couple. The blue-chip contemporary art on the walls is astonishing, but the show is still clearly his. "This is really cool," he says, pressing a shiny button at the edge of what looks like a sidewall; it's actually a partition 9 feet high and nearly 18 feet long. With a metallic thwack, out pops a nickel-plated latch, which he grasps. At his urging, the partition is suddenly in forward motion.

Gliding along, he leaves behind the living area's big aubergine silk-covered Christian Liaigre sofa, svelte dark brown leather-covered Edward Wormley barrel chairs, and rectangular wool rug, which fades from gray to bone. On he rolls, passing a large, typically all-white Robert Ryman painting on the opposite wall. Then, just as suddenly, his journey ends between the kitchen island and the dining table, nearly 39 feet down the tracks.

With this one grand gesture, the 3,700-square-foot layout has been radically transformed. And since several of the principal partitions in the loft move, Gluckman admits that not even he was fully prepared for all the possible arrangements that the owners have figured out. "They can do whatever they like," he says—referring, perhaps, to their means as much as their experimental spirit.

For now, the owners have hung a Thomas Ruff photograph on one side of the partition that Gluckman just moved and an Ellsworth Kelly painting on the other. Past the Ryman, there's a colorful abstract painting by Gerhard Richter in the dining area and, on its end wall, a jumbo Andreas Gursky photo of the Rhine. Beyond the dining area, in the master bedroom, a John Chamberlain sculpture of reclaimed car parts is mounted on the wall. '

In addition to the masterpieces on view, the museumlike mood owes much to Gluckman's own aesthetic, given all he's done to define contemporary art spaces around the world. The Ryman hangs against a backdrop of hand-troweled gray plaster, recalling Gluckman Mayner's work for New York's Mary Boone Gallery and Whitney Museum of American Art. Raw artist's canvas sheathes two of the sliding partitions. Looking around, he says, "I hope you notice there's only one white wall."

The loft building itself, previously a near-windowless refrigerated warehouse, supplied a chance for Gluckman to juxtapose "rich" materials with existing "poor" ones. Low-voltage halogen track lights—similar to those at the Museum of Modern Art—are rich; bare white bulbs in the bathroom are poor. He calls original concrete columns and new polycarbonate doors both poor. But the guest bathroom's tub surround and the panels that close off that tub when the apartment is in party mode are rich: back-painted glass in an unexpected hot pink. The gray terrazzo floors throughout seem somehow rich and poor at once. Formulated to look like industrial concrete, they resemble the material he once used in a Gianni Versace boutique.

Of course, an architect's "poor" is rarely cheap, as illustrated by the perfectly (and expensively) crafted aluminum window surrounds, radiator covers, and Donald Judd–inspired shelves. Gluckman spray-painted the developers' white-framed windows silver to match. In the master bedroom, one of those windows is partially obscured when a sort of vertical drawer, hidden in a sidewall across from the bed, pulls out to reveal a flat-screen TV. (As elsewhere in the apartment, Gluckman Mayner designed everything in the bedroom, right down to the blackened-steel headboard, reconstituted poplar paneling, pillows, and duvet cover.)

Meanwhile, at the loft's windowless center, a larger flat screen hangs above the kitchen sink. But who needs views when you have the outsize artwork on the walls and the walls themselves rolling this way and that? There's also the adjacent dining area's washboard tabletop. Not warped exactly, it's split bamboo. In Gluckman's estimation, the ripples are "not enough to tip over a wineglass." They are, however, enough to challenge his legendary reputation for restraint.

Previous spread: At a New York loft by Gluckman Mayner Architects, Thomas Ruff's photograph Substrat 11 II hangs on a canvas-covered sliding partition that separates the entry from the living area, where Robert Ryman's Connect, an oil on canvas, is displayed above Richard Tuttle's acrylic on plywood sculpture Fire.

Top: The living-area side of the Ruff partition features Red Green Blue, an oil on canvas by Ellsworth Kelly; Andreas Gursky's photograph Rhein II anchors the dining area. Bottom: The dining table's bamboo top serves as a pedestal for limited-edition titanium Coffee and Tea Towers by Greg Lynn FORM.

Top: A tug on the Ruff partition sets it in motion. Bottom: The living area's Christian Liaigre silk-covered sofa sits beneath Brice Marden's Black Frieze, an oil on linen. Under glass is Charles LeDray's Work Book.

Opposite: John Chamberlain's Quida is on view in the master bedroom, which can be closed off from public spaces with a polycarbonate slider on a ceiling-mounted track.

Top: Over the kitchen's counter, an inset flat screen shows art from a DVD. Center: The master bedroom's custom blackened-steel headboard backs up to Sol LeWitt's pencil Wall Drawing #34. Bottom: In the master bath, back-painted glass encloses the shower, while a marble mosaic plinth supports the tub, made from plastic.

Opposite: Katharina Fritsch's curiosity cabinet, Warengestell II, occupies a transitional space between the study and the living area.

Above: The living and dining areas' hand-troweled tinted plaster sets off Gerhard Richter's oil on canvas Abstraktes Bild, Dunkel.

Top: In the study, which doubles as a guest room, a flat screen is built into the aluminum shelving. A Richard Hamilton collage, Ghosts of Ufa, dominates the reconstituted-poplar paneling behind Rodolfo Dordoni's sofa-bed. Bottom: The guest bath's tub enclosure is back-painted glass.

Top: The sunburst on the study's ceiling is Richard Wright's gold-leaf Wall Mural. Bottom: A Jean-Marc Bustamante photograph, T.7.01, hangs on the study's sliding wall.

PROJECT ARCHITECT: GREGORY YANG. PROJECT TEAM: BENJAMIN CHECKWITCH; CHING LOONG-TAI; JULIE MOSKOVITZ-TORRES; NINA SEIRAFI; ULRIKE TRAUT; WILLIAM WATSON. TRACK LIGHTING (LIVING, DINING AREAS): LIGHTLAB. CHAIRS (LIVING AREA): THROUGH WYETH. CUSTOM RUGS (LIVING, DINING AREAS): ELSON COMPANY. CHAIR FABRIC, SOFA (LIVING AREA), CUSTOM CHAIRS (DINING AREA), SOFA FABRIC (STUDY): HOLLY HUNT. CHAIR FABRIC (DINING AREA): LARSEN. TEA SERVICE: ALESSI. CUSTOM TABLES (DINING AREA, STUDY): WYETH. THROW, BOWL (LIVING AREA): ART ET MAISON. LAMPS (LIVING AREA, STUDY): THROUGH LIGHTING CENTER. WINE REFRIGERATOR (KITCHEN): SUB-ZERO FREEZER COMPANY. SINK FITTINGS: ARWA. ISLAND COUNTER MATERIAL: MB WELLINGTON STUDIO. CUSTOM BEDDING (BEDROOM): HOUSTON UPHOLSTERY. TILE (MASTER BATH): STONE SOURCE. TUB (MASTER BATH), SINKS (BATHS): DURAT. SINK FITTINGS (BATHS): VOLA. SOFA (STUDY): CAPPELLINI. PILLOWS: ANNE KYYR QUINN. CHAIR: HERMAN MILLER. CUSTOM RUG: HOKANSON. GENERAL CONTRACTOR: EUROSTRUCT.