This year's Hearst Designer Visions showhouse is set to open later this month in the airy, loft-like condos of 250 West Street, a brand-new 111-unit Manhattan building with one heck of a sweet communal pool. As with years past, the magazine publisher paired each shelter brand with a designer—Matthew Patrick Smyth for Elle Decor, Antony Todd for Veranda, and David Rockwell for House Beautiful. This time around, though, the spaces were each then used as sets for two short films produced in two short days by The 48 Hour Film Project.
A bit about the inspiration: "The story we invented here is about a young couple," Rockwell says in a House Beautiful interview this month. "He's American, she's Dutch, and they've been living in Amsterdam. He's come here to be the media director of the new downtown Whitney museum. She's just gone into business for herself as a fashion designer. Her specialty is denim. The notion is that they picked this apartment because they're very casual about the way they entertain." Thankfully Rockwell went the eclectic route instead of filling the place with, uh, furniture made from blue jeans, using a yellow-and-orange Oushak rug and mohair sofa fabric in the living room, a rustic 19th-century workbench in the entry, an ultra-glam mixed-pattern wallpaper in the bedroom, and a sturdy Nakashima-ish wooden console in the media room, pieces that all keep the space from looking like it was—heavens, no!—curated for a showhouse. "We tried to make it feel like it happened over a period of time, mixing readily accessible things with some extraordinary finds," Rockwell says.
Browse the gallery above for a bunch of Rockwell's House Beautiful rooms, plus a sneak peek of the Veranda project—specifically the "handsome, big, sexy kitchen," as Antony Todd describes it—and the Elle Decor project, which both have yet to be published in print.
· A Layered Tribeca Apartment With Theatrical Elements [House Beautiful]
· Video: The Making of Designer Visions 2012 [Veranda]
· All 250 West Street coverage [Curbed NY]
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