A rchitect A ndrea Leung drew inspiration from childhood memories of her grandmother’s home to create a surprising New York loft space where all is not what it seems
LIVING AREA
A mirrored wall reflects the apartment’s columns and makes the main living space appear double its actual size. The windows, with their original wavy glass, are also reflected, bathing the walls in soft, refracted light.
LIVING AREA
‘I wanted to create the illusion of a much larger space from which you discover the more intimate, hidden spaces beyond,’ says Andrea of her box-within-a-box layout.
home front
Yale-trained architect Andrea Leung, who designed this Tribeca apartment for herself.
Situated in lower Manhattan, the 148sq m loft is the ultimate in broken-plan living. The main floor space is divided by custom blackened steel mirror and glass panels designed by Andrea, which lead to the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. The rest of the loft is one huge living/dining room, with an additional guest bathroom, plus a dressing room.
KITCHEN
One set of the mirrored doors opens to reveal this neat jewel box of a kitchen.
DINING AREA
‘At night, the brass surfaces reflect pools of dappled golden light onto walls and ceilings, creating a comforting glow,’ says Andrea of her own-designed furniture.
It took one look at the raw space of this loft for architect Andrea Leung to fall in love. ‘Ever since moving to New York I’ve daydreamed about designing a secret hideaway within this city of simultaneous exhilaration and exhaustion. On a quiet corner of Tribeca, I found the perfect site,’ she says. ‘Up a derelict flight of stairs, you emerge into a sun-drenched loft with soaring antique verdigris tin ceilings held up by cast-iron Corinthian columns.’ You couldn’t ask for more classic NYC materials to work with.
For the transformation of the apartment, two elements were key: making the space feel larger than it is and keeping it as bright as possible. To do both, Andrea’s architectural solution was to create ‘a box within a box’. To define this new addition, a mirrored/glass wall, featuring nine massive ‘windows’, was installed to reflect the existing columns. ‘Upon closer inspection, you notice that some panels are actually doors,’
