When beginning a renovation in a 1910 Upper West Side town house, the pièce de résistance was destined to be the kitchen. “We wanted to highlight a luxurious green kitchen that we foresaw as the inevitable heart of our home,” homeowner Shea Buckner says. Matt Bidgoli, one half of Perifio Interiors with partner Raphael Portet, was happy to make that dream—and beyond—a reality. Knowing the owners were creatives—Buckner is an actor and his fiancée, Martyna Frankow, a model—was a selling point for the project. “They’re definitely open to the world of color,” Bidgoli says. The couple desired “something that was classic but still had a little bit of a modern edge and was very livable,” he continues.
Buckner and Frankow became enamored with Perifio Interiors upon seeing images of a recently completed home in rural Hudson, New York. After being introduced at a mutual friend’s party, the couple knew they had found the right designers for their new 800-square-foot home steps from Central Park, and what would become Perifio Interior’s first Manhattan project. “Martyna and I immediately fell in love with the stunning history of the prewar brownstones that line the street,” Buckner says. The home, however, was not a tabula rasa; extensive updates were required.
Structural renovations took an entire year and a half. The soaring ceilings in the apartment lend grandeur to the smaller square footage, but the space overall needed some new walls, while maintaining some of the original brick, new hardwood floors, a fully renovated bathroom, and a transformation from an eat-in kitchen to one with a statement island. “Maintaining the original prewar character and highlighting the 20-foot ceilings while balancing it with a contemporary aesthetic was crucial,” Buckner explains.
Part of preserving the original details includes the steel-case windows that look out to the tree-lined street. Striking a balance, in front of those is a newly built window seat with velvet Kravet upholstery that doubles as a daybed.
Overall the palette upstairs in the loft bedroom is softer, and more languid, but still leverages the hero color of the home. “We stayed away from those deep saturated hues to promote more of a wellness and restful space,” Bidgoli explains. “I did bring in very subtle pops of color, and a little bit of the green from downstairs in the [Joe Henry Baker] painting above the bed and the long pillow on the bed. Going with the same motif, we used a very soft Japanese-inspired wallpaper and painted the closets sage green.”
A spiral staircase leads to the bedroom and its newly built wall of steel case windows (with hidden automatic black out shades, of course), that mirror the original windows downstairs, and allow for light to stream into the room during the day. The upstairs loft becomes an oasis, but still very much a part of the three-story home. Unless guests are in town, and then those shades can be closed up tight for the evening. “You definitely have privacy,” the designer says. “It is like its own little world up there.”
In fact, the whole home is like its own little world nestled into the buzzing city—both part of it and an island in and of itself for the couple and their frequent guests. “We emphasized that the space shouldn’t feel too precious—comfort and hospitality were always near the top of our list.” Buckner says.
