Andre Kikoski Architect integrates art and artisan works into the site's luxury rentals.
A new neighborhood is going up on the west side of Manhattan. Hudson Yards, a 28-acre mixed-use development that spans from West 30th to 34th streets along the Hudson River, is an engineering feat in the city. Capping an active railyard, the site creates buildable land where there wasn’t any before, and developer Related is filling it with offices, shopping, residences, and public art. Recently, the 33-story One Hudson Yards (by architect Davis Brody Bond) began renting luxury apartments on the south side of the site, adjacent to the elevated High Line park. With art-filled interiors, punchy amenities, and bespoke materials, it makes sense that the building’s interior designer has history with the art world. AD sat down with Andre Kikoski (whose previous work includes the Wright restaurant at the Guggenheim Museum) to talk living with color, integrating nature through materials, and luxury living.
Architectural Digest: Your firm is known for its luxury residential work, but this project is unique in that it’s not working with much neighborhood context. How did you get involved in the project?
Andre Kikoski: One of the early pieces that seemed to resonate in our portfolio with Related was our work at the Guggenheim, the Wright restaurant, and in fact, in one of the early meetings with the team when we had our kickoff, Related said to us: Because this is at the end of the High Line and the northern edge of the west Chelsea art district, we kind of see this as having an integration of art and architecture in the project. So, I think there was a very specific philosophy about what this building was going to be and our work thus far really seems to dovetail perfectly into the vision.
AK: I think so. We always love art in our work and integrating art. In the pieces that we’ve worked on, the collector’s residence at 1 Madison Park, the Guggenheim, our work is really about spaces in which art can be enjoyed, appreciated, and integrated. It’s part of our DNA. As I like to say, the very first poster that I bought when I was a kid was not a Ferrari or a guy sitting in a chair—you know, the famous Maxell poster where his hair is blowing from the music—the first poster I bought was a Mondrian print at the National Gallery.
AD: What artworks have you integrated into the interior design of the building?
AK: There are a dozen pieces of art throughout the building. We have two pieces by the Belgian artist Michele Francois in the lobby; one is a sculpture called Squiggle, which is a line drawing in three dimensions. There’s also a piece of his called Instant Gratification where he is throwing molten bronze into a large vat of water. He’s taking cups of bronze that are 3,500 degrees and throwing them into water so they cool and glob onto other vessels that he’s deposited in there. And curiously, when he produces that piece in the U.S., he does it in the same place as our foundry for the walls we had made for the lobby. We have walls in the lobby that are also poured bronze, and that’s also happening at the same place where he works. Yeah, it’s cool; it’s what we’re all about: It’s bringing everything together to create this experience that is unlike anything else.
AD: The lobby walls sound like artworks unto themselves. Can you talk a little bit about the building’s finishes and where you’ve found the artisans?
AK: The lobby has, as I mentioned, a 26-foot wall of panels of silicone bronze. They are poured in a foundry individually; each one is unique. This is done in a fine art foundry where they have been creating art for Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Yoko Ono, the best and the brightest and everyone you can imagine, and we commissioned them to create architectural surfaces. The silicon bronze is poured over sheets of linen and as the linen vaporizes, it burns a pattern in the tooth of the linen onto the bronze. . . . Also in the lobby we have an incredible light sculpture. I don’t want to call it a chandelier because it’s so much more than that, by the tech glass company Lasvit who work with a master craftsman in Bohemia. . . . I think there are just short of 400 components of glass and because there’s this theme of nature in our building, the proximity to the High Line, these could be understood as leaves. They are sort of interesting parallelogram, organic shapes. They’re essentially 400 small pieces of glass in different tones of clear and amber; some have silicon mica in them; some have gold mica embedded in them. You have this incredible texture and beauty to it.
AD: We’re very excited to see color in the model apartments. What kind of residents were you imagining when you were designing these spaces?
AK: We had an idea about hypersuccessful people who want the best in life and who have the best in life, who also value convenience and ease. Related has been very clear in saying, these are rentals, but they exceed the luxury and the built standards of most condos. We believe there is a group of people who just don’t want to be bothered with buying a property, going through an 18-month renovation, meeting with the architect for six months before that. So that’s who we’re creating these spaces for. . . . And for us, color is essential. Life isn’t black and white. Life’s not in tones of taupe and gray. New York is a city of boldness and richness.
AD: Do you have a favorite piece of furniture in the model units or amenities spaces?
AK: I would live in any of these apartments. I would gladly make the lobby my living room. There are so many things that are extraordinary. The master bedroom in the three-bedroom unit has a beautiful 12-foot-long headboard that we made. It has Loro Piana linen upholstery interspaced with hand-rubbed bronze accents in a sort of musical notation vertical patterning in a beautiful frame. Love that piece. The living room in the one-bedroom apartment has a vintage armchair from the 1950s that we re-covered with tie-dyed velour that we bought in Paris. Love that piece. There’s a huge comfortable couch in the lobby that we custom-designed that is almost a work of architecture in its own right. In the end, we love everything in there; there's no compromise.
Posted August 22, 2017
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