Dean Maltz reimagined a cookie cutter Upper East Side apartment to create a distinctly modern three-bedroom home for his family. The open and light-filled apartment employs sliding doors to create circulatory flow and spacious room to room connections.
The apartment is furnished and finished with a harmonious palette of walnut, white lacquer, glass, stainless steel, marble, solid surfacing, colored fabrics, and ebonized wood flooring. Warm and soothing earth tones of moss green and rust were mixed together with blueberry blue and regal purple in a space primarily defined by shades of white, black, and brown. Aluminum and brushed chrome finish light fixtures, accessories, and appliances are mixed throughout the space and provide a crisp counterpoint to the warm backdrop of European walnut sliding doors and wall panels.
Maltz, an architect and furniture designer, custom designed the apartment’s built-ins, as well as the living room sofa, coffee table, and end tables that double as a bar and book storage. The architect’s bedroom features a bed and nightstand which are cut from a single log of African Walnut mixed with rubbed steel. The kitchen and dining space is further accented by classic modernist pieces by Eero Saarinen and Jasper Morrison. The apartment also boasts a rich collection of photographs by O. Winston Link, Julius Shulman, David Hilliard, Eadweard Muybridge and Judith Turner, obtained from the Yancey Richardson Gallery (also designed by Maltz).
In the hall, sliding glass doors by PK-30 illuminate while shielding the mundane elements of a storage closet. The existing second bedroom was bifurcated to make way for two children’s bedrooms, each completed with a custom cut and individualized floor tile pattern. Their windows overlook the apartment’s private outdoor terrace, an extension of the warm and welcoming interior, complete with magnificent views of mid-Manhattan, the East River, and Brooklyn.
