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Interiors Trump Plaza, New York, USA

Living in the big apple

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Cooper Residence project Anna Marie Fanelli Floor & Decor www.annamariefanelli.com ceramic surfaces Cotto d’Este www.cottodeste.it

From the entrance to the living area, from the corridors to the bedrooms and bathrooms: four major brands of Italian ceramic tiles are the aesthetic and functional highlights of a large apartment created by architect Anna Marie Fanelli in the heart of New York by merging three individual units

La Fabbrica www.lafabbrica.it Lea Ceramiche www.ceramichelea.it NovaBell www.novabell.it year of construction 2011

by Riccardo Bianchi, AD

“With our kids at college, all of a sudden our home in Tenafly, New Jersey just felt too big,” explained Debbie and Marc Cooper. “There wasn’t much point in staying there and at the same time we were drawn to New York, the big city the other side of the Hudson. We told ourselves that life over there would be much simpler. So we decided to move. We bought three apartments in Trump Plaza and commissioned architect Anna Marie Fanelli to remodel them into a single residential volume.” With this in mind, a unifying element had to be found to bring together these three spaces with three different dimensions and layouts. With her expert knowledge of building materials, Anna Marie Fanelli immediately thought of ceramic tile – Italian tile. “It’s the best,” she said. A continuous tiled floor runs throughout the entire “public” portion of the house, which looks out from two sides of a New York skyscraper. What better solution for bringing visual unity to the entire space? The square 24x24 cm tile size was not chosen by chance. As the great architect of the Vienna Secession, Josef Hoffmann

In the home of the Cooper family, all sides of the living area – consisting of kitchen, dining area, bar space and various conversation zones – offer a spectacular view of the skyscrapers of New York. The entire floor is clad with Via Tornabuoni line tiles from the Kerlite Elegance collection.

. Another two views of the living area: the dining space and the kitchen. The panel behind the cooking area is clad with relief glass mosaic.

– appropriately nicknamed “Quadratl-Hoffmann”, or “Little Square Hoffmann” – maintained, the square is the primary form of architecture and decoration. Naturally the colour and pattern were also selected with great care, with a preference for a pale tone and an unobtrusive texture reminiscent of limestone from Antalya, Asia Minor. With this in mind, the architect chose the Via Tornabuoni line rom Cotto d’Este’s Kerlite Elegance collection. The choice of this floor tile had significant consequences for the overall structure of the house. First, it gave the space an “urban” dimension, creating a uniform platform of colour and material on which to base the apartment’s entire floor plan: the large open “plaza” of the living area, divided into a number of zones by a sequence of partition walls that mimic the New York skyline visible from the large windows; and the “roads”, the winding corridors that

. lead to the bedrooms and bathrooms in the night quarters. Secondly, tiles can be used to define and delimit the private areas through the use of different sizes, installation layouts, colours, shades and to an extent also suppliers (La Fabbrica, NovaBell, Lea Ceramiche). For example, tiles from the Via Tornabuoni line are also used on the floor in Marc’s suite, but in this case the chosen module is 12x24 cm set out in a herringbone rather than a linear pattern, a solution that is repeated in the laundry room. The “pale colour” theme, in this case used as a gender identifier, is maintained in Debbie and her daughter’s bathrooms, where the walls are clad with medium-format white tiles interrupted by silver Greek frets and frames formed from mosaics (La Fabbrica and NovaBell). Marc and his son’s bathrooms on the other hand have a strongly masculine feel, created by the contrast between white

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The corridor leading to the bedrooms and a detail from Marc Cooper’s suite showing the herringbone installation of rectangular version of Kerlite Elegance tiles.

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Elegance Via Tornabuoni

Charmetal Jaipur

Charmetal Agra

Progetto L14 Mood 14 Xwhite

York White

spaces urban residential applications interior floors and walls ceramic surfaces Cotto d’Este porcelain tile Elegance collection Via Tornabuoni line 60x60 cm, 30x60 cm La Fabbrica full-body porcelain tile Charmetal series Jaipur (black), Agra (white) 22x90 cm Lea CERAMICHE glazed white body monoporosa Progetto L14 series Mood 14 Xwhite 10x40 cm Novabell white body wall tiles York series white 25x36 cm, 12x36 cm

Left: the laundry room with Via Tornabuoni floor tiles and Progetto L14 series wall tiles, motif Mood 14 Xwhite. Left and below: the powder room with Charmetal floor tiles, Jaipur black accent. Furnishings designed by John Fanelli.

walls and black floors and black mosaic accents (NovaBell). Ceramic tile is the real functional and aesthetic dominant in this apartment. Everything refers to it. Suffice it to think of the creative designs that here and there enhance the décor, such as the ceramic mosaic that dominates the counter in the bar area, custom built like the kitchen by Sie Matic. Fanelli commented: “I think it was the colour and texture of the floor that inspired this woven-style mosaic panel, which I designed in cooperation with the renowned New York firm Mixed Up Mosaics. The same applies to the three-dimensional mosaic of the panel behind the cooking area.” But there are other factors behind the importance of tiles in this project. Anna Marie Fanelli and the Cooper family focused on two criteria in particular: ease of maintenance and environmental sustainability. With regard to the former, what material could be easier to clean and maintain than porcelain tile? And as for eco-sustainability, all the collections chosen are produced by Italian companies with a strong environmental commitment, in some cases using recycled materials. “In the end, we created a green house in the heart of New York, a house with low levels of consumptions and emissions that produces little dust and waste,” concluded Fanelli. “And the great thing is that all this reflects the personality of the owners. Ultimately, I believe that a house must offer a portrait of its inhabitants, their mirror image.”

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40 41 The home’s four bathrooms: clockwise, the son’s, the daughter’s (both with York series wall tiles, partially made from recycled materials and mosaic accents), Debbie’s (Agra floor tiles in Charmetal series) and Marc’s (the same wall tiles as in the children’s bathrooms).