Architect John Ike knows that when a designer and decorator’s relationship is symbiotic great things happen – Mia Jung tells how this Ike-led project triumphed
Interior designer Mia Jung, interiors director at Kligerman Architecture & Design, worked on this house with John Ike before he went on to set up architectural firm Ike Baker Velten in 2022. She reveals the ins and outs of creating a home that is singular in its design, like this one.
During my time at Ike Kligerman Barkley (IKB), I was lucky because I could get involved with a project from the beginning, as the house is being planned; from my perspective, those projects are especially successful. Being involved from the start of any house or apartment is always preferable because I get to weigh in on the practical details, such as whether there is enough room to install curtain hardware or whether the floor registers are in the least disruptive place for placing pieces of furniture. I’ll prepare a thorough checklist based on the architectural plans as they progress, and I find myself being a project editor. One important thing I learned over my 23 years at IKB is that John always has a very strong vision for his houses, inside and out, and he doesn’t really alter the overall vision.
By the time I became involved with this particular residence on a beautiful stretch of the Jersey Shore, the architectural aspects had been designed and the hard finishes had been selected. John was already sourcing furnishings at auctions for the clients, so I had to work with those choices, because he likes interiors and exteriors to be visually coherent, to relate to each other. John’s projects always have a storyline, a narrative. I always stress to the clients that if they can give him the freedom to do his job – to trust him and let him go in that direction – then the project will end up amazing. He told the New Jersey couple that his concept was an old Italian villa that had been renovated in the 1970s, not unlike the villa in the Luca Guadagnino movie Call Me by Your Name, and they loved the idea. The exterior of the house is black stucco, as if it had been constructed from lava rock, and the interiors are white plaster and terrazzo; it’s a house with a very strong sense of character and a simple palette that reminds John of historic buildings in Catania, a city on the eastern coast of the island of Sicily. It also explains
