Hospitality Design - November 2015 - 53

lifestyle
development

perspectives

trends

Byy Stacy Shoemaker Rauen
B

1

2

Photos by DONNA DOTAN

1+2. Gordon's 560 West
24th Street residential
project in New York,
where the condo's
living and dining areas
are blurred, and each
unit opens into its own
gallery entrance space.

SMART LIVING

With the issue focusing on intelligent
lifestyle, we asked three noteworthy figures
in the worlds of residential, hospitality, and
mixed-use development to sound off on
how they are raising the bar-through
experiences and collaborations-to reach
today's well-versed clients

Home Suite Home

"In the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, hobbies included
golf, tennis, and bridge," explains Adam Gordon,
a 20-year development veteran of high-end
residences and townhouses in New York.
"Today, they are food, wine, design, and travel.
People are a lot more sophisticated, and fluent in
shelter magazines and architects." In the luxury
residential development realm, he says this
shift first led to the "cult of the appliance and

the industrial kitchen." The next trend, he says,
was started by Donald Trump, who figured out
if he put his name on a building, people would
pay a premium to live or stay there. Residential
developers followed suit, bringing on big-name
commercial architects who were new to the
space. But Gordon says the next iteration-and
what he is focusing on-is the delaminating
of spaces. "It's not about the appliance, it's
about all the other sensations, because people,
especially those over 30, are having their peak
emotional experiences at restaurants and hotels
and want to bring those home." That means
the places where people eat, read, and think
are merging. "How do I bring my coffeehouse
home?" he says. "There's a deeper confluence
of public and private space." And thanks to the
democratization and IKEA-ization of design,
it's time to "rethink what luxury is," he says.
"Something isn't luxury if everyone has it."
For his latest (and first new-build project), an
eight-residence, 11-story building in Manhattan's

gallery-filled West Chelsea neighborhood, where
apartments will retail upwards of $7 million, he
brought in architect Steven Harris (it's his first
new construction condo project) to bring "a lot
of soul" and site-specific details into the design.
A limestone façade features French door-style
casement windows framed in bronze and
Tiffany-esque moldings. Each unit opens into
its own gallery space, and expansive walls set
against European solid oak chevron floors are
perfect for displaying art. "These homes are for
art lovers," Gordon says.

Community Building

For Mark Boekenheide, senior vice president
of Related, who is overseeing the architecture
and design of the company's 28-acre Hudson
Yards mixed-use community on Midtown
Manhattan's west side (the largest private real
estate development in the U.S., which will
begin to open next year), intelligent lifestyle
is a combination of personal experience and

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Hospitality Design - November 2015

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