Design Notebook: Lofts Painted to Create an Illusion
January 14, 2011
“When a color jumps across planes, you don’t know where that color exists,” he said. There’s an illusion “that I’ve painted space rather than painted walls.”
As one moves through the lofts, segments of Mr. Giovannini’s “space paintings” appear to connect and disconnect. “With a kaleidoscope, you turn the dial and it’s a different configuration,” he said. “Here, you just take a couple of steps. It’s all about deception and perception.” Mr. Giovannini, who heads a design firm in New York and Los Angeles, was inspired, he said, by trompe l’oeil surfaces of Renaissance architects and the more recent work of Russian constructivist painters.
Mr. Giovannini said that photos of the kaleidoscopic walls lure potential renters to the building, which is in Lincoln Heights, a neighborhood northeast of downtown that young professionals might otherwise overlook.
But it was art, not commerce, that inspired the project. Since studying architecture at Harvard, Mr. Giovannini, 64, has worked mainly as a teacher and critic (occasionally writing for The New York Times). “I don’t consider myself a developer,” he said, “but I’ve always looked for opportunities to practice what I preach.”
Opportunity presented itself in 2002, while Mr. Giovannini was visiting Lincoln Heights, where he was born and where his family still owns property. He noticed a “for sale” sign on what had been a phone company garage. Inside the building, he was captivated by the 20,000-square-foot space, its 30-foot ceilings lifted by filigree-like trusses.
“It took me about seven seconds,” he said, to come up with a scheme for turning it into 14 double-height lofts.
Back in New York, he and his wife, Christine Pittel, a writer, mortgaged their co-op apartment and used the money to buy the building; he then began a six-year process of designing, obtaining permits and renovating. The resulting apartments are spare, with the original concrete floors and wooden ceilings, but they have dramatically curved walls that sweep up to second-floor bedrooms.
Mr. Giovannini said he begins the process of painting “by prowling the space like a cat,” scoping out angles. “Once I have the idea, it’s fairly quick,” he said. “It takes me a day or two to set up the scheme — using tape as a guide — and then a house painter comes in and paints it under my direction.”
Tenants, once they move in, aren’t required to preserve Mr. Giovannini’s work. “I’m not possessive,” he said, and he knows he can always repaint. But when asked, he does advise them to keep sofas and tables away from the edges of the rooms. “The furniture should belong to the spaces, not to the walls,” he said. “Otherwise, it will kill the effect.”
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