Louis Kahn

“Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.”



Considered Kahn’s finest residential project, the Korman House in Pennsylvania was recently restored.

Dining Rooms

On Nantucket, Massachusetts, a couple commissioned Botticelli & Pohl Architects and interior designer Elissa Cullman to create their seaside retreat. “The dining room,” says Cullman, “with its hand-painted scenic canvas by Chuck Fischer, is the most vibrant room in the house.”



“The space itself was inspirational,” designer Charles Allem says of a penthouse he remade for a Manhattan couple. Walnut doors, fitted with bronze hardware, open to the dining room. Hanging over the expansive walnut table is an 18-foot-long bespoke fixture. Fabricated using 105 sandblasted-glass cylinders of varying heights, it gives off “incredible shades that reflect all over the room,” Allem remarks.



Art, books and light fill author and historian Barbara Goldsmith’s Manhattan apartment, designed by Mica Ertegun, of MAC II. “Instead of jewelry,” says Goldsmith, “books have become my Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” For the dining room/library, Ertegun bought an Art Déco table at a Paris flea market; the chairs were designed by MAC II. At rear is Three Weeks, 1957, by Larry Rivers.



Combining raw, native materials with a modern sensibility, interior designer Mariette Himes Gomez and architect Jim Morter created a singular retreat in Wyoming for Anne and Allen Dick and their children. An English Arts and Crafts leather screen adds texture to the dining area. The chairs, with a Larsen tweed, were designed by Gomez.

White Interiors

In East Hampton, New York, architect and designer Russell Groves gave a modern beach house “a fresh outlook.” Groves designed the sofa, armchairs and the travertine-topped low table in the double-height living room, which he opened up with new fenestration and neutral hues.

Interior designer Jennifer Post maximized drama in a minimalist Tribeca penthouse by using strong contrasts, rich materials and abundant natural light. The family room—“the evening hub and entertainment area,” says Post—leads out to a walled private terrace. As with the other public rooms, comments the wife, “I was very adamant that we not have draperies because of the openness and the clean lines.”

Fashion designer Ralph Lauren and his wife, Ricky, bought a Jamaican villa on Round Hill, near Montego Bay, some 20 years ago. “It’s a place where you really love where you are,” he says. Marble floors were installed in the living room.



A Tribeca penthouse’s dramatic spaces and stylish, streamlined look evolved out of a couple’s collaboration with design firm Sills Huniford and architect Robert Kahn. Bead-board cabinetry adds “warmth and texture” to the kitchen, which is “clean and sleek,” observes James Huniford. The bleached table, originally a glossy black, was formerly the wife’s writing desk. “We reused beautiful or loved things the couple already owned.”



Light and elemental purity distinguish an apartment designed by architects Michael Gabellini and Kimberly Sheppard that virtually floats above the panoramic New York City skyline. The kitchen appliances and millwork contribute to the clarity and harmony of the apartment as a whole, in which light, form and material coexist within a minimal envelope,” says Gabellini.