Industry: Was this your vision alone or a collaboration with your clients?
Clodagh: No, I never really have a vision that isn’t a collaboration with a client. Their thought was to have a pied-à-terre where they could spend weekends or nights in the city and where they could entertain. The male client is a tai chi master and Fortune 500 executive, and he wanted a large open space where he could practice tai chi, a Murphy bed so that his son could sleep over, a study where he could work from home, along with a minimal kitchen. So, the space needed to be versatile; the family also wanted to watch movies together and entertained together, so essentially the space needed to be a combination of business and pleasure.

Industry: What did this apartment consist of when you arrived?
C: It was a developer’s loft, with a kitchen, three bathrooms, and a powder room…3,200 square feet.

Industry: It sounds as though the space needed to be all things for all people, really. How did you manage that?
C: I set it up like origami [laughs]. I used shoji doors that slide open and closed to subsegment the space a bit. It was requested that the apartment also have a large table capable of seating 16 for business meetings. The table also had to not look as if it was a conference waiting to happen, so we mixed benches and chairs around it to loosen things up a bit. I also decided to incorporate window seats adjacent to the table for that purpose. Keeping the meeting space in one area also gave me the opportunity to have large furniture in the living room. I think it’s much more comfortable for people to have big things around, not least because you’re less likely to trip over them [laughs].

Industry: What inspired the color scheme?
C: Well, I checked the client’s horoscope signs and what their favorite colors are. The floor is this wonderful reclaimed walnut, and I so worked off that with a lot of blues and taupes.

Industry: What furniture designers did you choose for the space?
C: I worked with our own design for the dining room table, which is made out of beams from an old cotton mill in Atlanta, and then we used a very large platform bed by a designer named Juin Ho. Because the clients don’t get to see each other that often, I made window seats in the bedroom, because the clients love to talk to each other, and it’s an ideal area for that. I designed the area rug, the windows seats, the sectional sofa, and I also brought in some custom coffee tables from Brazil. To ground the place and to give it texture we also used a custom plaster.

Industry: What was your biggest challenge?
C: The worst thing I dealt with was the cacophony of badly-placed beams and columns, and the only real convincing I had to do with the client was to reorganize that. An associate I worked with said that originally, it looked as if somebody had sneezed things onto the ceiling, and when things are crazy like that, you get a lot of visual chatter. Site, after all, is the most promiscuous of all the senses; it’s hard to erase your hard drive once disturbance is there [laughs].

Industry: To what extent were environmental considerations in mind?
C: Everything we put in we tried to make environmentally sound. We had reclaimed wood from the cotton mill…reclaimed teak from Brazil. We used natural material for the window seat covers and cotton linens…we definitely do the best we can. I think the best thing I can say about what we do is that the health and wellness and joy of the people who move in come first.

Industry: Who did you consult about artwork?
C: I had John Wigmore create that 9' x 8' lightbox near the dining room table, and the clients also obtained a beautiful blue painting by an artist named Louise Crandell, who we also represent. Both of the rugs are from Armenia, and were meant to convey ripples upon a lake. •

Clodagh Design
212.780.5300
www.clodagh.com