What Can make a Dwelling ‘Sexy’?

When Jolita Leonas-Arzbaecher was arranging her new penthouse condominium in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, she gave her style and design group some really particular instructions.

“My house has to be as exclusive, remarkable and a single of a form as I am,” she told them. “Dramatic in the sense of being intriguing, sudden and highly effective.”

The grandiosity was not misplaced on her. “How’s that for me boasting?” she joked not long ago.

All kidding aside, Ms. Leonas-Arzbaecher, 65, an agricultural landowner and philanthropist interested in integrative and preventive drugs, sights her home as an extension of herself, and she wished the 4,320-sq.-foot apartment to be one thing genuinely unusual.

“My dwelling is a section of me,” she reported. “My art is a aspect of me.”

Despite the fact that the apartment was being constructed as element of a advancement undertaking converting and increasing a 1930s Art Deco parking garage into luxurious condos, she signed a deal to acquire the unit as uncooked place, for $3.3 million in 2017, she said, realizing that contractor-grade finishes would never fulfill her.

Then she commissioned Kevin Toukoumidis, an architect and the founding principal of the Chicago-based mostly agency dSpace Studio, to flip it into the modernist house of her goals.

“When you get in early, there’s chance,” Mr. Toukoumidis mentioned. “We were being introduced in prior to the metal was erected and ahead of the concrete floors have been poured. So the possibility was that we have been able to redesign and reinvent this floor program.”

For two years, he worked with the developer to customise the layout of the unit ahead of bringing in his personal builder, Fraser Construction, to finish the task. And he spent hours speaking with Ms. Leonas-Arzbaecher, teasing out the layout facts that would make her pleased.

“For me, creating a dwelling for our clientele is all about this intimate system,” Mr. Toukoumidis mentioned. “You have to have an understanding of the client’s life style today, but even more significant, assist them imagine about how they are likely to reside in the foreseeable future.”

In this circumstance, he listened to, loud and crystal clear, his client’s need for a showstopping interior entire of artful touches, metallic accents and pristine, white surfaces. And he developed a 4-bedroom property that, to Ms. Leonas-Arzbaecher, almost appeared pulled from her unconscious.

“Kevin has this outstanding means to use the hat of a psychologist,” she reported. “At instances, I felt he knew me greater than even I know myself.”

Mr. Toukoumidis installed a flooring of oversized white-porcelain tiles and, at the middle of the space, added a gas hearth open up on all sides and wrapped by steel rods, with blackened-oak panels previously mentioned. “It’s viewable from the family members place, the eating place, even the kitchen,” he claimed.

He used the exact same products to build a pantry with a hatch that enables it to provide as a bar for entertaining. For the kitchen, he worked with Poliform to make counters and cupboard doorways in white Corian, then included a wall of cabinetry finished in metallic lacquer and a backsplash of satin mirror to produce on Ms. Leonas-Arzbaecher’s request for a tiny shimmer.

The primary suite has a significant dressing home with glass-and-steel-mesh doors, a bed room with asymmetrical gentle boxes established into the headboard wall and a minimalist spalike toilet finished in white porcelain, white Corian and distinct glass.

For aid with sourcing vogue-ahead furnishings, luxurious resources and tailor made artwork pieces to more personalize the area, Ms. Leonas-Arzbaecher employed Project Interiors on Mr. Toukoumidis’s recommendation. Aimee Wertepny, the owner of Undertaking, and Jennifer Kranitz, the lead designer on the task, ended up straight away taken with Ms. Leonas-Arzbaecher’s enthusiasm for daring style and design.

“‘Show us what you got’ was sort of her M.O.,” Ms. Wertepny said. “She seriously preferred to see how we could push the boundaries.”

“The phrase ‘sexy’ was used a great deal,” Ms. Kranitz included.

They intended a 26-foot sofa that snakes across two walls of a sitting down spot, with an undulating seat to accommodate Ms. Leonas-Arzbaecher and her company, no matter whether they sense like sitting or sprawling. Previously mentioned the sofa, the partitions are swagged with bronze-hued ball chains produced by Beth Kamhi, an artist, that drape down to the cushions and spill onto the ground at one particular finish.

In the most important bed room, they questioned Studio BK to give the partitions a thick finish of smoky plaster. “We required something textural and virtually reptilian,” Ms. Kranitz claimed. “It feels quite sultry. It is a super moody area.”

To filter light in the key dwelling place, they mounted mesh curtains about the ground-to-ceiling windows. For the walls and ceilings in a lot more personal spaces, they extra wallcoverings that resemble metals, painterly lines and animal skins.

By the time Ms. Leonas-Arzbaecher moved into her new apartment in November 2019, she had put in about $1.6 million. The day-to-day dividend on that investment decision? Getting to reside in a space that is specifically tailored to her temperament.

“I walk in and I just say, ‘I’m home,’” she explained. “I completely adore it, because the property is such a reflection of me.”

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