French Excellence in New York: Villa Albertine Atelier by Hugo Toro.

With views over Central Park on New York’s Upper East Side, the historic Payne Whitney House is a relic monument to the Gilded Age. Formerly home to American Poet Helen Hay Whitney, the building has housed the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US since the 1950s.

Now the lavish five-storey building has a new tenant, Villa Albertine. Launched in 2021 with Gaëtan Bruel at the helm, the French institution supports artistic and intellectual exchanges between the US and France, seeking to revive the residency program across 10 major American cities.

Working with the Mobilier National in 2022, the Villa looked to redesign and restore the landmark’s fifth floor, transforming it into an Atelier for intimate dinners, meetings and small receptions for artists and writers. Selected through a competition basis, Hugo Toro showcased a bold vision of French grandeur and reverence for the building’s architectural heritage.

Geometry & Colour Reign Supreme Inside India Madhavi’s Reinvention of Villa Medici in Rome.

A renovation of the historical rooms at Villa Medici in Rome proposes a new approach to the interiors, where geometry and colour...

From concept drawing to realisation voila! Hugo Toro’s illustration of the Villa Albertine Atelier.

The Franco-Mexican Paris-based architect and interior designer saturated the space in crimson and gold, referencing the building’s gilded aesthetic in a contemporary fashion. Hugo took inspiration from Helen Whitney’s poem, ‘My Brook’, elegantly marrying the building’s storied past with French savoir-faire. Glossy green accents evoking water lilies from the poem are integrated into the design of the bench and fireplace. As Hugo elaborates, “This project is an architectural metaphor that explores the theme of water and the river, and their relationship with the surrounding flora.”

In the centre of the room sits a water lily-esque custom-made table and an amber-toned Murano glass chandelier hanging above. In the sitting area, a rug designed in collaboration with French artisan Pierre Frey was modelled off the shimmering surface of a pond.

A Flurry of Contemporary Art & Design: 1890s Tribeca Penthouse Reimagined by Crina Arghirescu Rogard.

Located on the top floor of the American Thread Building the space was once home to the historical ballroom of the Wool...

Hugo refurbished the Atelier de la Villa Albertine by combining the bespoke furniture with 11 Art Deco-inspired pieces from the Mobilier National collections. In the spirit of heritage and cultural exchange, Cinzia Pasquali, a conservator whose work includes projects for the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles, painstakingly restored the ornate barrel-vaulted ceiling and’ tomettes de Provence’ terracotta tile flooring.

“I am very happy, on the occasion of this first New York project, to have been able to contribute to the rehabilitation of a place steeped in history. Villa Albertine is a showcase of French cultural expertise [and] creative abundance,” Hugo concludes.

Le Rock Restaurant at NYC's Rockefeller Center by Workstead.

Located in the International Building, a 19th-century brasserie aesthetic is reconciled within its Art Deco walls...

[Images courtesy of Hugo Toro. Photography by William Jess Laird.]