Barbizon

The modern 220 m2 apartment, in the city’s first residential conversion (the emblematic Barbizon) was just the starting point for Fernanda Marques’ first project in the Big Apple following her first commercial initiatives abroad. From the original floor plan, “nothing is as it was”, and the Brazilian architect kept the not-so-high and beamed ceiling, rather than putting up a traditional plaster ceiling that evens out everything, a no-no among local architects. “I took the beams on!”, she says. Pristinely off-white, the space is designed around the “old versus new” idea, with its reclaimed wood floor throughout the apartment, finished with a matt resin. The client – who had already commissioned other projects from her in Brazil – displays his passion for art, music and wine in the apartment. “He is bold, athletic and young at heart”, says Fernanda, who brought the three guitars that take up the wall in one of the bedrooms out into the lounge, “giving them a prominent role in the setting, as he plays the instrument” – a bit of gossip: one of them came from Van Halen