3 Interior Designers Put Their Spin on the Same Luxury Loft

[Announcer] These three interior designers

have been given a photograph of an empty luxury apartment.

They have free reign to design it in any way they please.

I'm Noz Nozawa.

I would describe my style as bold, narrative

and a little weird.

My name is Darren Jett

and my designs are sophisticated, glamorous, chic.

My name is Joy Moyler.

When my clients come to me,

they're looking for relaxed, approachable and classic.

[Announcer] No clients, no restrictions, just blank space.

Looking at the space in front of me,

my first impressions are very much, Wow, this is a box.

There's not a whole lot of architectural interest,

except for these extraordinary windows

with an even more extraordinary view of New York.

It looks like it's a new build

or it might be an apartment building

that has been recently renovated.

It feels very developer spec to me.

I love the geometry of the space,

the floor, the ceiling, windows of course.

This has a lot of potential

to be something really spectacular and really cool.

[chill music]

Right now, the kitchen sort of takes up

half of the entertaining zone,

and what I would really like to do

is to essentially bring this wall in a bit further,

and I think in an apartment like this,

having much more of a wet bar look,

even though it really is a chef's kitchen behind,

could be something that would be very cool.

Really, I'd love to incorporate marble.

If we actually clad all of the cabinetry in the same marble,

thus creating much more of a jewel box moment.

First, I'm gonna start with the kitchen.

She's boring.

I wanna take some of the wood and move that up.

So maybe we'll do a wood island,

maybe we'll do a wood range hood,

so that we bring that wood texture and that warmth

but up and lift it up off of the floor.

And then I wanted to still warm things up,

so that's why instead of a range hood

where you can see the stainless steel,

we're doing a wood-clad range hood

with the liner up hidden inside.

The back wall of the cabinetry,

I'm going to introduce a little bit of blue

to really mirror that sky.

The rest of it, I'm just gonna kinda keep it the way it is.

There's clearly not a good flow through the kitchen.

The existing peninsula, it just cuts off access,

'cause if you're all the way here, over by the pillar

looking at the view, I don't want you to have to go

all the way around, around the peninsula,

just to get to the fridge so you can have a glass of water

or a refill of your wine.

That's silly.

So I'm gonna remove the peninsula

and replace it with a floating island.

The island appears to be

just maybe a simple white corian island.

I'm going to introduce a little bit of stone to it,

'cause I think stone is much more luxurious

than simple white corian material.

I'm going to paint the underside of the island,

just to create a little bit more dimension

and a little bit of shadow line underneath the island.

I think that'll be a nice little touch.

[chill music]

To be honest, I love these floors.

I think they're so beautiful.

They're a wide plank oak, but I love the idea

of playing with all of the surfaces that are volume,

so the ceiling, the walls, and now the floors,

all being white.

I'm not someone who loves a wood floor.

There's something very very luxurious

about softness underfoot,

so if we think about something,

almost like a silk, for instance, below,

something that would be very very soft.

I wish you could put your hand on this right now, like I am.

It feels incredible.

I also think that introducing a rather bold color

on the ground plane that sort of matches

perhaps the sky that we're seeing

is a nice reference point as well,

and can drive the design of the project even further.

[chill music]

What I would really like to do

is to always think about the view,

always thinking about warming up the space.

What I would love to do more than anything

is to embrace that feeling by cladding this entire wall,

including around the portal to the kitchen,

in a bronze mirror.

Obviously it makes the space feel twice as big,

but also it makes everyone look so good.

I absolutely loathe a white ceiling.

What I would like to do

is also think about cladding that ceiling,

so it would create more of a womb-like effect.

This is something that's very cool.

It is a piece of brass that has been oxidized,

and the more oxidation that happens on this side,

the darker it gets,

and it sort of creates this ombre degrade,

and what could be very cool

is to actually have the darker brown here

up against the mirrored wall,

and then the lighter portion up against the view.

And I would love to create a sort of regulating rhythm

with the panels, and just maybe up against the windows,

it starts to kind of kick back, like a slight curve

that maybe offsets the column here,

and everything feels very architectural.

And then we're able to actually clad

the column in the corner in the same dry sienna,

so everything feels very considered and very put together.

In an effort to tone down all the crisp white

so it isn't overly done,

I'm going to play off the underside of the island,

and have the wall just a sort of gray taupe-y color,

so you don't feel like you're sitting in a white mass.

You don't want to feel like you're sitting in an igloo.

[chill music]

We've got mostly very minimalist, very modern contemporary

clean straight lines and right angles.

How fun would it be to contrast

off of these right angles and straight lines?

I love that it's just sort of this gorgeous arching snake,

but it also has structure, bringing that into the space

and making it feel a little bit warmer.

So this gorgeous little set of neutrals

is my favorite set of pebbled leathers.

I'm thinking of using of these very soft white

or soft off white leathers on the desede sofa in the back.

So for the rugs in the space, they're actually rectangles,

but then they're floofy and soft and really comfortable,

and they've been woven to not have certain elements.

There's actually holes deliberately cut into the rugs,

and that brings back that organic nature

of what I'm doing with the rest of the furniture.

I'm using this wall here as an opportunity

to define that living room space,

and first thing you wanna do

is you wanna have a big comfortable sofa.

I always like to have a nice soft textile on the upholstery,

particularly the biggest piece of upholstery.

That often gets the supplest and the most tactile textile.

I really do love a white sofa, but don't be afraid.

There's a wonderful product

out there in the world called crypton.

You could literally pour an entire bottle of red wine

on crypton textiles and they are not going to stain.

I often really like to start from the architecture

and the finishes.

Right now, up until this point,

it seems like everything is feeling minimal,

everything is feeling a little bit hard.

We're using hard stone, we're using mirror,

we're using brass on the ceiling.

It could be very nice to perhaps offset

all this harshness that we're creating

with something very very soft and amorphous.

Thinking about designers like Verner Panton from the 1960s,

other space age designers,

even to today, someone like Misha Kahn,

who's creating these very fantastical forms.

So perhaps, instead of having a form that is very flat,

maybe it's something that is kind of wavy.

So if we think about fabrics, perhaps having a tapestry

or sort of pattern on top of it,

perhaps in a Jean Lurcat type of pattern,

which brings in a bit of art deco, a bit of shinwa,

but it still feels very modern,

it still feels like it could be very cohesive in this space.

So the coffee table and the two chairs

are very much a part of this sort of organic modernism

of the space.

I specifically wanted swivels

so that you could face your friends in conversation

or turn out and face the view,

because that's such an incredible part of the space,

and then we were thinking of using

really nubby, cozy, comfy fabrics on it.

I really wanted to play with different hues of off white,

this sort of idea that they're perfectly imperfect together.

While they're actually white and sort of delicate looking,

these are, in fact, very very much made for, quote,

intense residential use,

so they're very practical in that way.

The actual lived experience of being in a space like this

is very much about all five senses,

so texture and how it feels, not just with your hands,

but also against your arms and the back of your leg

when you're lounging, all of that is so critical

to actually enjoying the space and being in it.

I love the idea of keeping the rest of this volume

sort of empty, but having a circular shaped coffee table,

because a circular object is always much easier to navigate

than something that has corners.

I love the idea of having a front facing lounge chair here,

which also permits visibility,

clearly outside of these windows.

Whenever I'm using a lounge chair,

I like to have an end table.

You need a space to put a glass down,

maybe to put your eyeglasses, your iPad.

You don't need to have a sideboard.

I think it's a functional thing to do.

It's a place to put down a food tray or serve drinks.

[chill music]

I get really edgy

when people fight for the head seat at a dining table.

I don't like that sort of hierarchy.

I think, at a round dining table, everyone's equal,

and when you're laying out a space, the rule of thumb

is the distance between the face of the table

and the next object truly is 36 inches for comfort.

So with regard to the dining space,

this table that I'm choosing is by Casey McCafferty.

It almost looks like a little wood monster.

So I'm very much still repeating

this sort of white on white on light on white neutral,

so we've got a very lovely off white carpet

on the white floors that have been painted,

and then the wood is very much a bleached ash

or a bleached oak.

So it's very light but a bit warmer, and that sort of adds

some of that organic warmth and texture back in.

I really am into the idea lately

of creating these dining rooms that are much more casual.

If you use them, you use them.

If you don't, it's also okay.

It's not an empty chair and an empty table.

So if we had something that was sort of rigid on the outside

that matched maybe the architecture of the box,

but we had something on the inside

that was much more of an amorphous form,

we could create something like this,

and then you would have a table

that could rise out of it like this.

I think it would be very cool also

to have maybe some seat pads,

and the whole idea is that those could perhaps move around.

It could be very nice to think about it

perhaps being in a leather.

I love this sort of citrine, chartreuse

kind of greenish yellow over here,

something that's very durable.

And I also perhaps like the idea

of thinking about all of this furniture sort of melting.

Perhaps we do these kind of spidery forms

but these might be something where it's a fringe

that kind of hangs down.

If we think about the plinth of the dining room

that's built up, maybe the cushions have fringe

that kind of folds off of that, right?

But I think we could do something a bit more dramatic

in a nice leather like this.

For the rest of the dining seating, both at the island,

the bar stools at the island and the dining chairs,

I wanted them to be really inviting and playful.

So for the dining chairs,

those are the Monsieur Oops chairs from Pierre Yovanovich.

I love what Pierre does.

I think these chairs are so cute.

So they're both adorable and upholstered,

so they're legitimately comfortable.

Then, at the kitchen island,

I wanted all of the seating at that island

to be similarly linear, but still playful.

I love the geometry on these chairs that I'm selecting.

I love that the frame really sort of sets a tone.

I love the use of the retan caning against the black frame

of the dining chairs,

because they mimic the framework.

That same sort of detail starts to appear

at the counter stools, but in a different coloration,

so that's a play off of one another, the light and the dark,

and if they were all the black frames,

it would start to look very very heavy.

So creating a little bit of relief in the room

comes from lightening up the material of the counter stools.

[chill music]

I love lighting.

I think it's very often an opportunity

for you to use something very functional,

but treat it as an art form

and a piece of art in your space.

Both the chandelier and the pendants in this space

are from the 2018 body of work from Rogan Gregory.

They're both amazing, and it's actually this same material

as the coffee table in the living room,

so we have things that come both from the ceiling

and up from the floor in that same material.

I did pendants over the kitchen.

We've got this idea to stagger the pendants height wise

and then also install them in the ceiling

not exactly in a line, so they're more in a cluster.

And then this crazy, wild, amazing, big blobbo light fixture

is deliberately oversized

and meant to sit over the dining table

as an art piece basically.

And then, of course, you can't only have light

coming from the ceiling.

I want for some of the light to be rooted in the floor,

so I'm obsessed with Annie Lee Parker's pieces.

It's two points of light,

and she basically hand makes these pieces from clay

and casts them, and then adds the globe lighting afterward.

Having, stylistically, an aesthetic

where all the lights still feel organic

and feels of a similar shared brain,

even though they're by two different artists,

is kinda cool.

I love the female male relationships

of furniture and decorative objects in a room.

With the chairs being very geometric in shape,

I think it was a nice introduction

to use cone shaped pendants over the table.

And then lighting over the island,

that sort of dome shape, I think, softens that space up.

I absolutely insist that all of the lights

on all of my projects are dimmers,

because you've gotta increase the sexy, right?

You can't do that if you've got a bunch of 60 watt bulbs

constantly glaring in your face.

So you'll notice

that we don't have a lot of overhead lighting in the space.

I also am not a big overhead lighting person.

I think that the best lighting

really comes from ambient lighting,

usually on the perimeter,

or spotlights on specific points of art.

You never really want a light

that's on your forehead, right?

That's never flattering for anyone, you or me.

But instead of doing a statement light piece,

I would love to do something here

that really embraces the height

and makes the space feel higher,

since we're creating very low seating,

and there could be something interesting

about maybe picking up on this idea

of the fringe cushions that we're doing

and having fringe lights that come from the ceiling,

and that whole thing is lit within

and creates a really nice moment.

Imagine that in the evening, just turning that on,

dimming it very very low and how that would look.

[chill music]

I love art.

I don't think any space is complete without it.

But for a space like this,

a New York vibe, New York environment,

I'm really drawn to geometric shapes

and much more abstract or geometric art.

No one really likes

to look at themselves fully all the time.

I think there's something very evocative, a bit mysterious

about having the depth behind you of a mirror,

that reflection,

but in front of you is a beautiful piece of art,

and it's really about offsetting the modernity

that we're putting within all the architecture.

So the artwork that I'm thinking of using

is actually also ceramic, so again,

kind of similar to the light fixture from Annie Lee Parker,

and it's by an artist, Olivia Conye.

I love her work so much and I love femme artists

who take up a lot of space with their work,

so big monumental pieces is really inspiring to me,

and that plays off of the casting of light so beautifully

that it felt like I wanted to feature that in this space.

[chill music]

As you can see, I am very much envisioning

a lot of white surfaces, a lot of white furniture,

a lot of white everything.

But obviously I love color, so what I'm thinking of doing

is using color by way of light and translucency,

by turning this whole wall

and making them almost a very modern, maxed out sized

stained glass installation.

So when the sun passes through the windows

and onto all the furniture and the walls,

you get color coming through the windows

and that basically floods the whole apartment

with colorful light.

There's nothing that is as simple to do,

besides paint perhaps, that can totally change

the effect of a space than the movement of a drape.

I think in this space that clearly gets a ton of light,

the view is absolutely incredible.

If I had this view,

I would absolutely leave it open maybe 50% of the time,

but the other 50% of the time, I would close it.

And if you want to think about a late afternoon

when the sun is very harsh, you close that

and then the whole space lights up

almost like a Japanese lantern.

Everyone looks amazing in that light,

and you're in this sort of womb space

but you're floating in the clouds.

[chill music]

I honestly love this design.

I'm very proud of it.

It was a fun challenge for me because so often,

I am using literal colors in a space.

So my approach to this space

is really to follow the architecture,

follow the geometry of the space,

let that lead and sort of take it from there,

and it's all about how you wanna feel

when you're in a space.

I could really see this space as being for someone

who really loves to entertain.

I think there's something about this apartment to me

that feels very New York.

So perhaps it's almost like after an evening out,

we meet some interesting people and we just arrive here.

We're very lucky to arrive in this fantastic place

and we're almost watching the sun rise over the water

and it's coming into the apartment,

and we get these sort of deep shadows

that stretch across all the furniture

and really enriches all the fabric.

[chill music]

Ooh!

So different.

Oh my gosh, amazing.

Wait a minute.

Okay.

I mean, classic, iconic, I love it.

The high contrast, for me, is so major.

I mean, we knew, right?

Like hello, this is Joy Moyler, people.

I really like how crisp and clean it is.

I think the scale is really nice.

I love the pendants hanging above the bar

and over the island.

Also I love that every chair at the dining table

is an armchair.

I just never think to do that.

It just makes the caning so much more present in the space.

And I love caning.

It's a wonderful opportunity to provide something

that's semi-transparent, that also has texture,

that reduces the shine of other materials in the space.

I really want to be in this space.

I wanna sit at every single seat in here

and play with every single surface.

Really, I'm drawn to what you did with the windows.

I think that's very very cool and I can just imagine

that light sort of cascading on my face when I'm in there.

I love that she did the complete antithesis of what I did,

which was very angular,

and it looks like a really comfortable space

that you can just kinda hang out anywhere

and just enjoy yourself.

Yeah, I love that.

And so much great color.

Oh, thank you so much.

I thought, what if we created something

that was really embracing the sunrise,

really thinking about entertaining?

Nothing's too serious, nothing's too stiff,

everything's very low, curvy.

I love this so much.

The blue carpeting, first of all,

is just very inspiring to me,

and the first thing I noticed, of course,

is just the mirrored surfaces that you created.

I think that's so brilliant,

especially because it allows for a very democratic way

of seeing the view, that if I were seated, as a guest,

'cause I'd like to invite myself over,

if I were on the sort of window side.

You're invited.

Oh thank you.

Facing into the apartment, to be able to also get a chance

to see the view through the reflection, I think,

is a really thoughtful way of entertaining,

and I kind of thought of this space

as an entertaining space too, so I love this.

I love the low seating,

'cause when you have a little bit too much wine,

you don't have to fall far off the chair,

so that is something that speaks to my heart.

Sitting low makes the windows taller,

so that scale is immediately increased threefold,

that verticality.

And it's purely an entertaining space,

there's no television, there's no bookcase.

You just go there to party

and I want my invitation for next Friday.

I would even like to see elements of Noz's lights here,

replace what's here.

Oh, how fun.

I think that would be a wonderful way

to soften these lines,

which tend to be very geometric and hard.

And it's totally steel,

this idea of the color on the windows.

I think it's so sick.

Thank you.

Stained glass in a modern way.

And I'm obsessed with caning and still have never,

it didn't even occur to me, but I love that.

And the whole notion, I love that you were thinking

about the translucency.

All three of our spaces, I think,

really embraced the notion of translucency.

Like with yours, the caning, I love the idea

of the sun passing through it and casting shapes.

Shadows on the wall.

Yeah absolutely.

And then I love the idea too,

whereas mine, it's about where the light lands,

yours is sort of, where does the light pass through

and then manipulate shadows,

and then yours is about how does light refract

off of reflective surfaces?

So I'm obsessed.

These are amazing.

[chill music]