Featured in the latest New York Design Hunting (which has been teased here and is there and is now online): the earthy, stripped-down flavor high modernist Ricardo Legorreta brought to one apartment in Manhattan's genteel paean to prewar luxury, the hallowed building 15 Central Park West. Not only does the duplex have a bold sense of geometry and a less-is-more ethos, but Legorreta's only project in the city was designed to celebrate nature through an "appreciation of the inherent beauty of stone and wood," as was often the late architect's wont. A tall order for any urban nest, but one look at the main living space (pictured above), with that monolithic sculpture of a staircase ascending over two "marble reflecting pools with a soothing, almost sacred quality," and the apartment seems to have filled it quite nicely.
Ironically enough, it was the son of Robert A. M. Stern, the building's architect, who advocated for and helped orchestrate a design that was such a stark departure from his father's, which, in the case of that handsome staircase, included having nine steel plates hauled up 18 stories by crane and welded on-site. For a closer look at Legorreta's obsession with natural textures—wire-brushed white oak floors and a bathroom of Aztec red stone sourced from Mexico, where Legorreta was born and went on to work with the famed architect Luis Barragán—check out what he did with George Clooney's and Cindy Crawford's neighboring Mexican villas.
· Monumentally Modern [New York Design Hunting]
· All Previous Design Hunting Coverage [Curbed National]