Walk Through an Architect’s Dream Home in Southampton, New York

2023 Best of Year Winner for Small Residential Transformation

Timothy Godbold’s nonprofit, Hamptons 20 Century Modern, aims to preserve period dwellings throughout the costal area. This one has special significance: Along with partner architect Sea Lodge, Godbold transformed it into a 1,700-square-foot dream house for himself, replete with rough-finish stucco walls, built-in planters, and geometric furnishings. The designer calls it his lair, a nod to the title (and subject matter) of a favorite book showcasing great secret hideouts of movie villains. One was the cliff-top residence of the antagonist in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, a made-up structure that sparked the designer’s very real love of mid-century architecture. Other personal fascinations that are among the hodgepodge of influences: ziggurats, science fiction, and Godbold’s own childhood home in Australia, which was by a Swedish modernist.

TIMOTHY GODBOLD: TIMOTHY GODBOLD.

SEA LODGE ARCHITECTURE: MATTHEW KOHNE.

Inside a Flatiron Loft That Doubles as a Spalike Retreat

2023 Best of Year Winner for Small Apartment

Rarely does an architect get to renovate the same property three times—let alone within a decade. But the owner of a loft in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, an art dealer, kept coming back to Messana O’Rorke. After the firm designed his original 800-square-foot apartment, the client purchased the studio next door; partners Brian Messana and Toby O’Rorke combined them to create a 1,200-square-foot unit. Later, they returned to install a new kitchen and flooring. Throughout the process, the loft retained a warm, minimal aesthetic and oak-and-brass palette. “We expanded and altered it while keeping the same spirit,” Messana notes.

Located in a former factory building, the expanded apartment has an 11-foot ceiling and seven south-facing windows. The challenge, Messana says, “was how to keep the essence of a loft, that big open space, without creating a studio.” The solution lay in sliding frosted-glass doors trimmed in unlacquered brass that separate the bedroom suite and a snug den from the living and dining area, but allow light to flood through.

The first iteration of the apartment had a galley kitchen that the client rarely used, but over the years, he began to cook more and wanted to entertain. Messana O’Rorke opened the kitchen to the great room, removing the partition wall and installing a basaltina stone countertop with a fridge and freezer hidden underneath. Cabinets clad in French oak match new 9-inch-wide floorboards that replaced fumed-oak flooring to further lighten the space.

For all their appeal, lofts can lack an element of surprise: You walk in the door and see a huge space in its entirety. “The problem is you only have one experience—it’s one-note,” Messana says. He and O’Rorke laid out the apartment so it reveals itself gradually, creating a sequence of events. At the entrance, visitors encounter an intimate foyer with a shoe closet, then turn into a storage-lined hallway and glimpse the front windows. But it’s only farther down, when they arrive at the kitchen, that they can start to appreciate the full size of the loft—and it takes further exploration still to discover the more tucked-away den and bedroom.

There’s one last surprise. “Nobody expects the main bathroom—it’s insane,” Messana says. A masculine, spalike retreat, it’s covered almost entirely in exuberant travertine, including a sexy shower stall with an illuminated tinted mirror. An encore indeed.

Walk Through the Manhattan Loft Apartment

fair: stools (kitchen).
dwr: sofa (living area).
armadillo: rug.
the citizenry: ottoman.
water­works: fittings (bathroom).
uc group: custom bed (bedroom), custom glass panels, custom sliders (bedroom, living area), medicine cabinet (bathroom), shelves (closet).
juniper: lamp (bedroom).
west nyc home: sofa (den).

the hudson company: wood flooring.
lv stone source: stone supplier.
zerolux lighting design: lighting consultant.
m.a. rubiano: mep.
wood floors & surfaces: woodwork.
abs renovations: general contractor.

The Future of Hospitality Points to Luxurious, Nomadic Spaces

This luxury nomadic “hospitality solution” may be the world’s first. The gist is this: Moliving prefabricated units—essentially freestanding hotel suites—can be moved via road, sea, or air; installed almost anywhere on or off the grid; and grouped or stand alone. Built on custom chassis, they have the ability to be removed with no impact to the ground underneath, and then hauled to a new location. “Whereas others have repurposed existing structures like trailers or shipping containers, we created something from scratch that’s not only sustainable but also fully mobile,” Moliving founder and CEO Jordan Bem says. “The premise is producing hotels that operate at peak occupancy at all times by fluctuating the inventory to match the demand.”

Moliving partners with property owners to provide the units, plus operations such as management and reservations systems. The contemporary architecture and interiors, with floor-to-ceiling windows and such self-sanitizing technology as air-purifying systems and UVC lighting activated remotely between guest stays, were designed in collaboration with BenaroshStudio and architect Steven Chen. The first incarnation of Moliving, Hurley House—named for the eponymous town in New York’s Hudson Valley—opens this summer with 60 units, a number intended—and able—to fluctuate seasonally.

DeMuro Das Rethinks the Nightstand

Nightstands can be a bit of an afterthought, the bed’s too-oft-overlooked sidekick. Brian DeMuro and Puru Das of DeMuro Das, an interior and product design firm based in New Delhi, India—and now with a New York showroom—boost the genre’s status with Corbu. The 24-inch-high bedside table boasts boomerang-shape walnut pulls, asymmetric solid walnut or oak legs, and drawers with hand-applied sheets of plant-based Carta—a non-animal alternative to parchment the pair discovered on a sourcing mission for interiors clients. (“Its beautifully mottled surface has an organic, tactile quality we love,” DeMuro notes.) The proportions of the fireplace at Adalberto Libera’s 1937 Casa Malaparte informed the overall shape. Another reference? Le Corbusier murals—hence the name.