When he found this loft in an arts district downtown, he knew it was a perfect fit. Rigaud wanted the vibrance of his art collection to provide the color to the space and opted to keep the concrete walls and white painted drywall just as it was.

“I wanted to keep everything open,” he says. In planning out how to use the space, he focused on the entertaining he wanted to do, keeping things uncluttered, choosing the right light fixtures and providing the right backdrop for his Haitian art collection.

“I love to cook, I love to entertain, and I love to throw dinner parties, says Rigaud. So he took the space most people use as the living area and made it the dining area.

Large windows on two side of his unit flood the home with natural light.

This is a TV-free zone. “When I entertain people, we don’t sit around and watch TV,” he says. Thus, he turned the second bedroom into a den and relegated the television to that space

You can get a good feel for the layout of the public spaces in this image. The bedrooms and public spaces form a U-shape around the kitchen and two bathrooms. “I already had this table, and because it was wooden and so heavy, the wire chairs were a good match,” says Rigaud. He also installed the light fixture, called Larmes, which means “teardrop” in French. It is composed of 24 teardrop-shaped bulbs that cast a wonderful light for entertaining.

“I didn’t want to leave this area empty, or fill it with too many things,” says Rigaud of this space next to the front door. Four Barcelona chairs surrounding a marble coffee table from CB2 create a conversation area. A perfectly-scaled drum pendant, also from CB2, hangs overhead, and a floral painting by his mother, Jeanne Rigaud, brightens up the space. In fact, most of the paintings of flowers and women you see around the loft are his mother’s work.

“My mother is 86 years old and is self-taught,” says Rigaud. “She started painting about 20 years ago, in her 60s.”

Rigaud kept the cabinets and granite counters that were already there when he bought his loft. He added a beautiful and reflective glass mosaic tile backsplash he found at Clad Tile and Stone.

Acrylic counter stools give guests a perch where they can keep Rigaud company while he prepares dinner

A bookcase separates the master bedroom from the main living space. A mix of books and Buddha heads fill the shelves. Rigaud has been collecting Buddhas from all over the world for many years.

The mermaid on the wall is from another Haitian artist who creates sculptures from junk found on the streets

The vibrant floral painting over the bed is by the late Haitian artist St. Pierre. It extends draws the eye up from the headboard.

Two fun owl table lamps from West Elm provide reading light.

Tate Bed and nightstands: Crate and Barrel

Here you can see how bedroom number two is tucked away beyond the public areas of the loft. In order to keep those areas TV-free, Rigaud transformed this room into a television den.

More paintings by his mother, a Noguchi coffee table and a comfortable sectional outfit the cozy space

While this is a fairly well-sized balcony, there isn’t room for a lot of stuff,” says Rigaud. “I wanted to provide seating and room to move around.” A well-timed visit to a DWR closeout sale provided him with the sofa and chairs, which he says he got for “just about nothing.” The West Elm stools work double-duty as cocktail tables and extra seating

To create a living room scaled to their vast collection of modern art, Marino converted four small rooms into one loft-like space. At right is Gilbert and George’s Growing Up.

“Art is part of the environment,” says Marino, who helped the couple assemble their collection.  Cambodian sandstone heads are displayed near Damien Hirst’s Potassium Chloride. Love, 1966, is by Robert Indiana.

On one wall of the entrance hall is a five-panel canvas by Jorge Pardo. Anish Kapoor’s Blood Solid is on the floor. Felix Gonzalez-Torres did the light sculpture. The gorilla console is by François-Xavier Lalanne.

Many of the furnishings, accessories and fabrics in the living room, as throughout, were designed by Marino’s firm, including the pair of ebonized and gilded-brass bookcases, the fringed sofas, the bronze pillow fabric and, at right, the pair of lampshades trimmed with antique sari fabric. On the circa 1970 Plexiglas low table is a circa 1900 hammered-bronze bowl from Japan. The painting, Witness, is by Richard Serra.

“It’s a very gracious house,” says Marino, who preserved original elements such as the crown molding. “There’s nothing tight or narrow.”

The first piece of art the couple bought together—Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #767—dominates a living room sitting area. The pair of slipper chairs are Marino’s own design.

The dining room’s vertical-stripe wallcovering makes a lively backdrop for a light sculpture by Leo Villareal, over the mantel, and a work by Paola Pivi, at right. The lamps are by Josef Hoffmann. Tiffany’s silverware.

Converting a club into a residence is “adaptive reuse,” says Marino. “It was fascinating to watch the switch.”

“I said, ‘Let’s go nuts here and make the whole room an artwork,’ ” Marino says of the powder room, which was painted by Eli Sudbrack. The cabinet is by Gio Ponti; the chandelier is by Verner Panton.

Marino treated the paneling in the master bedroom with Venetian plaster. The canvas at right is by Mark Sheinkman; at left is a 1981 oil by Marc Chagall.

But this immaculate space is also the perfect backdrop for its ownerâ€s finely honed collection of Italian industrial design from the 1960s and 1970s, which includes furniture and lighting by legends like Joe Colombo, Cini Boeri, Mario Bellini, Gae Aulenti and Angelo Mangiarotti. Their particular brilliance at combining function and form while exploring the newest materials and technologies of their day resonates with Renaud-Clément, who views these pieces as sculpture as well as furnishings.

The Italians made work that could fit anywhere,

he said,

even in an old palazzo.

In this case, the palazzo is the former factory of the Eagle Electric Company, in a neighborhood that appealed to Renaud-Clément precisely because it hasnâ€t yet been gentrified, a fate that long ago befell the Manhattan ZIP codes where he used to live. When he bought the space, the kitchen was at the one end of the loft that had windows, and the bedroom was completely enclosed. With the help of Steve Blatz, a New York architect, Renaud-Clément moved the kitchen to the other end of the space and opened up the bedroom. He left the wide hallway essentially empty: “It energizes me,” he said.

And if the furnishings are deliberately spare — “I donâ€t like accumulation,” he declared — so is the art. Works by artists like Yuichi Higashionna, Not Vital, Hedi Slimane and Michael Phelan punctuate the glowing whiteness of the space.

Sometime soon Renaud-Clément, ever the editor, will auction off some of the pieces from his design collection, which currently totals about 450 things. But among those Italian classics he refuses to part with are two Ferraris from the 1970s and a 1967 Maserati Ghibli, which its owner calls “a mythical car.” They are an extension of Renaud-Clémentâ€s passion for Italian design, but, like the chairs and lights in his loft, theyâ€re not meant to be museum pieces: he drives them around New York and takes them to Europe every summer. Extravagant, perhaps, but can you imagine someone who lives like this driving around Europe in a rental?

Words from the architect

The customer wanted a two-bedroom pied-a-terre that would function as a gallery for a private art collection and library. The library is housed in a ten-foot-high 40-foot-long curved walnut bookcase that contains display vitrines. The artwork is dispersed throughout the apartment, which also contains a Japanese tea room and an outside terrace.

The project purpose was to create spaces that reflected various aspects of the clients collection of arts and books. By creating various spaces that reference and display the art collection, the clients personal interests are integrated into his living space.

Walnut cabinets were used throughout for display. Floors are of a quarter sawn maple. Full height glass panels divide spaces and the tearoom light fixture is made of a single enormous piece of origami.

Entering the loft one is in a tall gallery space that opens into the main space of the loft. Directly across this open space is a full height glass wall leading out to a large terrace looking North and East, which admits abundant light into the loft. Facing the terrace is a thirty-foot long curving walnut bookcase, which has been designed with integral lighted vitrines for the display of rare books or art objects. Other vitrines complete the perimeter of the main space. The space opens towards the East onto a tatami mat area. The master bedroom suite is adjacent to the tatami mat room and is designed to flow spatially into a luxurious master bathroom.

{Photos: Amador Toril}

via Home decorating trends