Photographer's Loft in New York by Desai Chia Architecture

This isn’t the first time Desai Chia Architecture have had a run at designing this loft in New York City. The first time was back in 1997 when they knocked out two loft apartments and made it into one super sized 460sqm pad. They pulled out all the walls and stained the oak flooring grey. To say it was stunning was an understatement. So they had a lot to live up to second time around.

This time their design was for a photographer who wanted it to be a space they could meet clients in, work in and also treat it as a gallery of sorts. They also wanted to be able to live and cook and treat the space like home. Two very different briefs.

You walk into the apartment via the public area of the design. It’s a simple space. A wall of plywood boxed out shelving that house books and items a photographer might need and a large desk for showing portfolios. Gone are the old grey stain floorboards. Instead a pale blonde oak timber stretches across the essentially open plan.

Continuing from the reception area is the general work space. The same wall of boxed out shelving runs from floor to ceiling but this time it’s white on white. A long open plan work desk sits between the shelves and the concealed wardrobes backing onto the general work area. It’s hard to make a room with no windows feel light and airy, but the glass wall between the reception space and the work area illuminates the room with natural light. The sheet of opaque glass appears to glow inside the windowless room.

They’ve used similar tricks in the entry foyer and reception space, cutting the ceiling into geometric shapes and backlighting it. It makes for a play of crisp illuminated light, detracting the brain from recognising there’s no natural daylight.

The final room along this axis is the bedroom. Tucked in at the end of the working corridor, it has access to the semi-concealed wardrobes slotted into the work space.

Take a right hand turn from reception and you find yourself in the private areas of the apartment. Aside from the stunning views over Tribeca (and they are stunning!), the windows themselves are salivation worthy, the kitchen and living spaces are so beautifully simple it’s the type of space you’d give your right arm to live in. Desai Chia kept the original cast-iron columns. Of course. But this time they’ve added a kitchen that has so much grandeur, so much style it’s almost an art installation in and of itself.

They’ve taken the black cast-iron of the columns and adopted it as the material de jour for the kitchen. A blackened steel kitchen island bench sits like a granite monolith grounding the kitchen solidly into the space. The back wall of the kitchen runs full height towering all the way to the sky. But with the gorgeous ceiling detail, the geometric cut out and back lighting, the kitchen area feels light and airy. A metal plate makes up the ‘art work’ of the back wall, the suspended hovering effect created by backlighting the plate. It is all incredibly sexy. The blackness of the kitchen and columns contrasting with the blonde oak flooring and the floor to ceiling white kitchen cabinetry. Like a leggy model, the wall heights seem to go on forever.

The main bedroom comes off the living room. Sliding doors on each side of the bed giving way to access back into the living space. Bathrooms are a plenty in this apartment. The walls of all of the bathrooms made from a resin that moulds down into the basins giving a seamless effect from wall to basin. Again the ceilings are cut to produce artificially made light wells.

Nothing more to add here. It’s all just stunning. ALL. OF. IT.