Today, Architectural Digest welcomes AD100 designer Robert Stilin to tour one of his most important designs–his own home. From structural changes to every interior design choice, Stilin takes you through the process of turning a once abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn into his dream loft apartment.
ARTWORK:
Flag at Snug Harbor © Michael Zweck. Courtesy of Michael Zweck Studios
Photograph © Hélène Binet. Courtesy of ammann // gallery
Photograph © Patrick McMullan. Courtesy of Patrick McMullan Studios
The Air Between, 2016, Wolfgang Tillmans. Courtesy the artist; David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; and Maureen Paley, London
ARTWORK:
Flag at Snug Harbor © Michael Zweck. Courtesy of Michael Zweck Studios
Photograph © Hélène Binet. Courtesy of ammann // gallery
Photograph © Patrick McMullan. Courtesy of Patrick McMullan Studios
The Air Between, 2016, Wolfgang Tillmans. Courtesy the artist; David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; and Maureen Paley, London
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00I think my best advice to someone designing their own space is think about how you want to live your life.
00:07What kind of kitchen do you want to have?
00:10Where do you want to drink coffee?
00:12Do you want to have six people for dinner? Do you want to have 16 people for dinner?
00:16How do you want to have drinks with your friends?
00:19Ask yourself all these questions that we ask our clients.
00:23I'm doing for myself exactly what I try to do for my clients.
00:26Give myself a home that's right for me, just like I'm trying to help my clients create a home that's right for them.
00:34I'm Robert Stillen. I'm an AD100 designer based in New York, and I'm going to take you behind the design of my new loft in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
00:43I found out about this loft and this building about eight years ago.
00:47I had a close friend of mine who was living in Red Hook, and he and a bunch of his friends were talking about this amazing new industrial loft building on the waterfront.
00:56And it was exciting, and I was intrigued.
00:58I had been living at that point in Soho for over 10 or 12 years in the same apartment, which was beautiful.
01:05But I was looking for a bigger space, and I wanted to live more graciously.
01:10I wanted to have light. I wanted to have space.
01:13The minute I came to this building, I was like, I think I'm going to live here.
01:18So this building is called the New York Dock Building.
01:20It was built in the early 1900s as a warehouse for things coming and going on the ships that still continue to come and go in front of this apartment in this beautiful shipyard.
01:34And over the course of time, it ended up being an empty, abandoned building.
01:44This is the space, more or less, the way that I bought it.
01:47It was completely raw industrial space, which was great for me because I wanted it to be as authentically a loft as I possibly could do.
01:57I really wanted this room that we're sitting in right now to feel like a loft.
02:02I was much happier to expose all the heating and air conditioning than build a soffit out of drywall to hide it.
02:08I kept all the columns. We didn't touch them.
02:11If they had graffiti on it, we left them. If they had paint marks on it, we left it.
02:14There's all this history here, and I think that that's important in design and the history and the age of things.
02:22You're sitting in a chair that's 60 years old, and you're sitting on a rug that's 90 years old.
02:27It's not perfect. It has age in it. It has the history of other people who lived on it.
02:32And all these things do, and that makes a difference. It's soulful.
02:36Yeah, this place is kind of new in the sense that it's all renovated, but all the things and the layers make you feel comfortable.
02:43They make you feel at home. They give you a sense of history and a connection to something.
02:54When I was working with my architect, Mark Geddes, to sort of come up with a plan for this apartment,
02:59I really wanted to keep the loft space on the water side.
03:03So this is the layout of this apartment.
03:06Over here is New York Harbor. On this side is all of Brooklyn.
03:09You get sunrises on the bedroom side. You get sunsets on the loft side.
03:16And on the water side, you have these expansive 180-degree views.
03:21You're overlooking the entire New York Harbor.
03:24We have the shipyards here, the Statue of Liberty, Governor's Island, all the way from the shipyards of New Jersey,
03:30Lower Manhattan, the Financial District, and you can see the Chrysler Building.
03:34You can see the Brooklyn Bridge.
03:35This is the primary suite here.
03:39So it has a very, very, very large, gracious bedroom area that has a whole seating area in it.
03:46Very large primary closet.
03:48And then the primary bathroom also is a room with a steam shower and a tub, and it has furniture in it.
03:55The connection between the west side and the east side doesn't have any natural daylight,
04:00so I really wanted to have these portholes so you could have light in there during the day
04:03and still be able to create privacy.
04:06And I really wanted to live in a loft.
04:08So I decided to keep the western exposure, which overlooks all of New York Harbor,
04:14as my living space in one gigantic loft space that's sort of kitchen, dining, and living.
04:20So this is the loft area of my apartment.
04:23This space is like 1,800 square feet, and it's a big, big, big volume.
04:28And I know probably to a lot of people that's like a daunting idea.
04:31People are like, how did you do that?
04:33How did you make this feel so cozy and so comfortable and so natural?
04:37And one of the things is that you invisibly divide the space up into the spaces that you're going to have.
04:43And so there's the kitchen, there's the breakfast, loungy kind of area,
04:47there's the dining space and the living space, and you almost pretend like there are walls between it.
04:52Everything is set up to be comfortable for one person to live here, but also it's flexible.
04:56If I have like one or two people over for lunch or coffee, I'll sit here.
05:00If I want to have like a drink with someone, I might sit here.
05:03It could be a one-on-one or it could have like 10 or 15 people over there.
05:06There isn't one chair or seating surface in this apartment that's not comfortable.
05:11I'm still a huge proponent of shopping and seeing things in person and trying them out.
05:16And I'm often baffled today when there's so much consumption online of like things for the home,
05:22and I don't know how people do it.
05:23Things are not always the way they look and things are not always the size they said they were.
05:28Like I can't say to a client they're comfortable unless I sat on them.
05:31And I don't want the responsibility of endorsing them if I didn't sit on them.
05:34Every single piece of furniture in here, I try it out.
05:37I'm a hunter and a gatherer, so I have a tendency to like collect lots of things.
05:42And I learned at an early point in this business,
05:45and also because I was attracted to like antiques and vintage and all that,
05:48that like if you see something today and you really like it and it's unusual, you have to buy it.
05:53You're not going to find it in six months when you want it.
05:56So that creates this, you know, need to have like a shop or a gallery
06:03and also to create an inventory for all these things so they're available when you want them.
06:08So the kitchen is a totally functional kitchen.
06:11I wanted to have enough of a kitchen to sort of like have the things that I care about.
06:15Like I really do like a big island and I like to be able to cook for my son and his wife.
06:21It's not so much about like I have to have a certain range.
06:24We use Wolf a lot.
06:26I have a big farmhouse sink from Waterworks.
06:29I also was lucky enough because I do have this big gracious space
06:33to have a scullery, butler's pantry sort of behind it
06:37that has everything that this kitchen doesn't have.
06:40I have an extra refrigerator.
06:42I have an ice maker.
06:43I have lots of extra storage.
06:45And I like to have things in sight in terms of like the cooking things
06:49because it's just easy to get them.
06:51And I like to have the things around that are usable and functional.
06:55And also I think the layering makes things cozier
06:59and just has a more like organic feeling to it.
07:02Too organized and too perfect is, it's not chill.
07:07You know, anywhere in the apartment that you might have a drink,
07:09there might be like a stack of those plates somewhere around there
07:10that you can just take them and, you know, use them for drinks.
07:14I don't have an issue at all about getting a ring on a table,
07:17but I like to have coasters.
07:19And I don't use like coaster coasters.
07:21I like to use like cool little vintage plates or they can even be new.
07:25I have like a whole bunch of different ones
07:27and I like to like serve a drink on a coaster.
07:30So this is my bedroom.
07:33I have Brooklyn in front of me.
07:35I feel engaged, but I also feel sort of,
07:37Red Hook is super peaceful and quiet at the same time.
07:40And the sun comes up and there are these beautiful shadows
07:44on the wall, on top of the art.
07:46It's kind of on the big side,
07:48which is why I wanted to move into this apartment.
07:51I really wanted to live in like a more gracious way.
07:53So I've had some parties here
07:55and like people love to come into this room and hang out.
07:58And if I have 50 people over here for cocktails,
08:00people wind over into this room
08:02and my bathroom is really quite large
08:04and has this furniture in it.
08:05It feels good to sort of like share my life with other people.
08:09I have never personally had a bathroom that was quite this large.
08:12It's an extension of my room.
08:14It's an extension of my life.
08:16And I like to take time getting ready.
08:18And I sit in that bathroom in one of those chairs a lot.
08:21I really love this room
08:23because I'm surrounded with so many things
08:27that are so meaningful for me
08:29and that I've collected over the years,
08:31some 20, 30 years ago,
08:32some pieces that I just found in the past year
08:35or even a week or two ago.
08:37This chair, which is designed by the Campana brothers,
08:40who I've known for a long, long time,
08:42I really enjoy what they do.
08:44Their work has like a sense of humor
08:46and it's functional and it's beautiful
08:48and it's unusual and unexpected.
08:50This chair came up for auction
08:52and it sort of just worked out that I was able to get it.
08:55And I'm happy to have it here for those reasons,
08:58in addition to the fact that it is like an attention getter
09:00and people, they're so curious about it
09:02and it's actually super comfortable.
09:04And I'm a big believer in design is great,
09:06but if it doesn't function, if it doesn't work,
09:08it doesn't really make any sense to me.
09:10I'm connected to everything that I have in this apartment.
09:13I think I have 300 or 400 works of art in this apartment.
09:16I have personally purchased every single one of them.
09:19Every single one has a story behind it.
09:21There's a lot of relationships with artists,
09:24with dealers, auction houses,
09:26all the sort of different people that make up the art community
09:30and the design community are all woven into the history
09:35that is in all these pieces.
09:37And I've been doing this business for 30 years
09:39and top of my career and all that sort of stuff.
09:41But there's also all these other people,
09:43you know, designers and dealers and gallerists
09:45and those people that they were starting out
09:47when I started out and we were all like,
09:49we're nobody and trying to make our way in the world.
09:51And to have all that history and experience
09:53of all those people, I mean, it's all tied to all these things.
09:55It's just super meaningful for me
09:56to live surrounded by all those things.
10:01I have no academic education in this business.
10:03I didn't go to design school.
10:05I didn't go to architecture school.
10:07I didn't go to landscape architecture school.
10:09I didn't go to construction school.
10:11I didn't go to any of it.
10:13I think it's really important to trust your feelings
10:15and talk to people that you know in your life
10:17that you respect their opinion about that thing.
10:20Talk to people who know about design and furniture and art
10:23and all that and see what they say
10:24and then see how it resonates with you.
10:26Get the best advice you can get.
10:28But also, I think mostly trust your instincts.
10:31If you love it and it's functional,
10:33it's going to work out.
10:35You have to pay attention to the needs
10:37and the restrictions and all that
10:39that you have in whatever your space is.
10:41But if you buy things that you love
10:43and you buy things that have purpose
10:45and they have function,
10:47if you buy a chair and it's comfortable
10:49and it's going to be your dining chair
10:51and you sit in it and you feel like
10:52I could see myself sitting in it
10:54and you pick a table and you do the same thing
10:56and you do that for everything,
10:58it's going to work out.