How an Actor Turned Designer Made an Apartment in 'Mad' Magazine's Former SoHo Office Feel Like a Plush City Refuge

"It's a far departure from the beachy-bungalow vibe. We knew we needed to be structured. At the same time, his tech-entrepreneur client-a longtime friend who also recently decamped from the West Coast-asked that the 2,063-square-foot bachelor pad function as a refuge: plush, composed, and calm in the middle of the city."

"For urban drama, Johnson leaned into the unit's 12-foot ceilings and sweeping north- and west-facing views. But the existing architecture also presented challenges, notably a long L-shaped plan, a series of irregular niches, and structural quirks-like a hulking steel column slicing through the middle of the main bathroom."

"It's unavoidable. We saw it as this very industrial, New York City element. Rather than disguise it, Johnson left the beam exposed and echoed its hard-edged materiality across the rest of the bathroom's fixtures."

Jesse Johnson's first New York project is a two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath residence for a tech entrepreneur relocating from the West Coast. The designer recognized his signature beachy-bungalow style required significant adaptation for New York's dense urban environment. The 2,063-square-foot space needed to function as a calm, composed refuge despite the city's intensity. Johnson leveraged the unit's 12-foot ceilings and expansive north- and west-facing views for visual drama. The existing architecture presented challenges including an L-shaped floor plan, irregular niches, and a structural steel column through the main bathroom. Rather than concealing this industrial element, Johnson incorporated it as a design feature, echoing its materiality throughout the bathroom's fixtures.

Read at Architectural Digest