As a sponsored project for Sonos about New York City’s most interesting creatives, Sight Unseen featured the Tribeca loft of Danish designer Søren Rose and his family. Much of the Q&A is about his career, but there’s also good stuff about the apartment:
••• “When we moved here from Copenhagen, we rented first.” That place got Loft Peeped in 2012. “Then once we decided we wanted to stay, in early 2015, we looked at a lot of spaces in Tribeca, but they’d all been renovated. So they were very expensive, but we’d be buying something we knew we’d rip out. It felt stupid. But when we saw this—just a 1,400 square-foot, one-room studio that hadn’t been touched for at least 50 years—we were completely in love. Most lofts are dark in the middle, but it had windows on three sides, plus skylights creating this amazing Scandinavian light.”
••• “There’s a word for it in Denmark: the everyroom, this big room that holds all the things that would normally go into the dining room or living room. Someone can be doing homework at the table, someone’s cooking, someone’s watching TV on the sofa. We’re doing individual things in our individual zones, but we’re together.”
••• “The floor is very special—it’s Douglas pine in 18-inch-wide, 1.5-inch-thick planks, some of which are almost 28 feet long. When we ended up having material left over, I obviously wasn’t just going to throw it out, so I sat down and designed some hexagonal planters and a bench. My wife said that for every person in the house, we needed a huge plant.”
••• “Both the fan and [the prominently displayed fire extinguisher] were two objects from Boffi I always wanted to have. It was in the co-op regulations here that you’re supposed to have a fire extinguisher, and so I was like okay, now I finally have to order it. Though this is pretty decadent, a quarter-inch thick, brushed stainless-steel canister that holds a small extinguisher inside. It’s a crazy way of encapsulating something that’s already made of metal. It’s so bizarre, like only the Italians can do.
••• Regarding his photograph collection: “You’ve gotta be either Keith Richards or Steve McQueen to get on my wall.”
There’s much more about the furniture—along with more of Bryan W. Ferry’s photographs—the full Q&A by Monica Khemsurov. Last but not least, totally unrelated to Tribeca but definitely of interest: Rose is working on “a potentially game-changing project with Bjarke Ingels […] a series of tiny architect-designed prefab cabins.”
Recent Loft Peeping posts:
• Nadine & Matt Abramcyk
• Ku-Ling & Evan Yurman
• Jane Boon & Norm Pearlstine
• Gwyneth Paltrow
• Gerken Building Penthouse
• Mark Berryman