This fabulous Fifth Avenue studio spotted on NY Mag, was once a dentist’s office in a past life became the new apartment home for designer Suchi Reddy of Reddymade Design, in Greenwich Village, New York. The cramped 375 square foot space fit her budget, a mere $400,000! Purchasing the home three years ago with wacky plumbing, Reddy was seduced by the late afternoon sunlight through the windows and the high ceilings and the fantastic view of the Gothic church across the street. Designing Manhattan luxurious Manhattan apartments for clients, Reddy knew the home had great potential and great bones. Reddy took on an eighteen month renovation, completely gutting the place. To get an idea of the volume and how everything was going to fit in the space, Reddy designed a dollhouse-size model without partitions. She even designed a scaled down version of herself to make ensure she could freely move through the space without knocking into anything.

She began with recessing the walls inside the originals, creating bookcases, picture shelves and designing seven electronically controlled blinds to evoke a sense of depth. A total of fifty-one drawers and closets were tucked into the new walls and cooking area. The platform bed opens up on both sides to allow light to penetrate in from the bathroom window, to create an overall sense of illumination. The small scale model showed hard edges and surfaces, so to work around this, Reddy opted for soft white and gray quartzite atop the counter between the kitchen and living areas, linen was applied to the bedroom wall surfaces, walls were given a Venetian plaster finish for softness and illusion of space and the wooden closet doors were coasted with plaster to create a cushier texture. Utilizing a monochromatic color scheme of cream and white helped to open up the space even more. She relies on art to distract from the studio’s small size. Reddy lives in this space quite comfortably, even hosting dinner parties for six!

Reddy constructed a cloud light from packaging materials; it floats above her customized Spoon table, designed by Antonio Citterio and Toan Nguyen for Kartell.

When more space is needed, the table lifts toward the ceiling.

A curtain made from traditional Indian gold and linen, given to Reddy by her sister, rises electronically into the ceiling above.

When the curtain is lowered, it acts as a translucent room divider.

Photos: Douglas Friedman