Aperture

Classical rooms are usually made in older houses, where mouldings disguise walls that were never straight. This apartment is high in a contemporary tower, so it had the opposite problem: a perfectly true envelope and no history at all. The work was to give it one without faking it.

Every panel and moulding is drawn to the room's real dimensions and joined, not applied over gaps, so the ivory walls read as architecture rather than decoration. The ceiling is layered in three planes, each hiding a line of light, with crystal chandeliers set into the deepest recess where they have room. Olive velvet, antique brass and a single patterned rug carry the colour; the stone behind the television is the only dark surface in the room, and it holds the eye exactly where a family actually looks.