Double Deco
One designer creates a pair of apartments at Miami’s Aqua community.
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August 1, 2008
Art Deco is a part of daily life in Florida’s Miami Beach. Streamlined hotels in sun-bleached shades of turquoise and coral alternate down the South Beach strip. The clean forms of the 1930s buildings served as inspiration for Aqua, a luxury residential community located on the southern end of a small island just north of Miami Beach known as Allison Island. The project, completed in 2005, brings together high design and urban planning in a subtropical setting.Developer Craig Robins hired noted New Urbanist planners Duany Plater-Zyberk to devise a master plan, which includes three mid-rise condominium buildings and 46 townhouses. Envisioning an architectural showcase, Robins hired innovative New York City and Miami architects Alison Spear, Walter Chatham, and Alexander Gorlin to design each of the multistory buildings.
"Aqua is a very unusual place. The people here are artistic, and living here is a little easier, freer. The design is very simple, very minimalist. Sitting at my dining room table, I can see the Tuttle wall out the window," says Aqua resident Robert Dimmerman, referring to artist Richard Tuttle’s 150-foot-tall mural, Splash, which spills across a facing building in glass and ceramic tile.
Dimmerman and his wife, Rochelle, own an apartment in the Spear building. Residents of Philadelphia, they spend two or three weeks at a time in Florida. Their Aqua home is both a modern vacation oasis and a flexible, comfortable place where they can entertain. Their unit was originally two bedrooms, but the Dimmermans craved a more open floor plan, so they turned to Miami-based interior designer Claudia Luján, owner of Claudia Luján Interiors. Luján took down the wall that separated the living room and the second bedroom, installed soffit lighting, and redecorated the entire 1,300-square-foot space.
One of the biggest challenges Luján faced during the 18-month process was creating harmony between two distinctive pieces of furniture: a large, orange Roche-Bobois sofa and a dark gray, snakeskin dining table the clients had in storage for 20 years. The dining table is by Karl Springer, a New York designer whose fashionable work from the 1970s and ’80s has become increasingly collectible since his death in 1991. Luján lightened up the brooding table by pairing it with Philippe Starck’s clear acrylic Louis Ghost chairs. In the living room, the black version of the chairs is paired with the sofa and coffee table, also by Springer.
In the former second bedroom, now the den, Luján used charcoal gray paint in both flat and glossy finishes to create a checkered backdrop for the cozy leather sofa, which is flanked by dramatic Cavalli table lamps. Getting just the right lamp, sconce, or chandelier is one of the designer’s trademarks. "I love lighting," she explains. "It is 60 percent of the design and makes a big difference."
Luján’s interest in illumination also drove her design of a four-bedroom penthouse apartment in Aqua’s Gorlin building. The clients, a Mexican family who enlisted Luján after seeing her work in the Dimmerman home, wanted a neutral, airy interior to contrast with their brightly colored residence south of the border. The family uses the 2,400-square-foot home about six times a year to soak up the laid-back beach lifestyle. "They like contemporary, sophisticated, and elegant spaces, but they wanted it to be warm and inviting as well," says Luján.
To accomplish this, the designer chose a minimal, chiaroscuro palette accented with light fixtures by the Italian company Kundalini. In the hallway, a lamp designed by Marzio Rusconi Clerici and made out of laser-cut Plexiglas tubes is both artistic and functional, while a sculptural fiberglass luminaire in the master bedroom sheds an intimate glow. Above the breakfast table sits something not typically found in many luxury homes: an Ikea pendant light. "It’s something the homeowners found, and it just seemed to work in the space," says Luján. "I usually don’t think about the cost of each item. Instead, I think about the uniqueness of each piece to accomplish the final result." The pieces are striking, but because they are luminous, they do not overwhelm the space, allowing room for relaxation and gazing out over the Miami skyline. "For me, a design has to be comfortable for the homeowner," says Luján. "No matter what I do, the clients are the ones living in the space."
Aqua, 305.867.5700, www.aqua.net
Claudia Luján Interiors, 305.597.9060, www.claudialujan.com
