Today, AD welcomes interior designer Darren Jett to tour one of his most recent design projects, a full Soho loft renovation. From structural changes to interior design, every decision matters when renovating a space–Jett breaks down how he landed on the final design and what factored into his choices.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00When we first saw the loft, I wanted it to feel sensual and a bit mysterious as well.
00:12When people walk into the space, I want their clothes to immediately fall off their body.
00:18I think you can start to understand how that might be the case.
00:25The project in total took just over two years.
00:28There were definitely some challenges along the way and this is essentially where we started.
00:37I'm Darren Jett.
00:38I am the owner of Jett Projects based here in New York.
00:41And today we are in the heart of Soho in a beautiful loft that we recently renovated.
00:46When we first saw the loft, it was so nondescript.
00:51There was nothing in here that really called attention to what was cool about it.
00:55The kitchen was just sort of there.
00:58The bathrooms were just kind of there.
01:00And it really didn't highlight the beautiful parts of this apartment that I wanted to highlight.
01:06Every neighborhood in New York is different, but Soho has a certain vernacular that is
01:10very specific.
01:11It's these old warehouse lofts that have been preserved really since the 1970s when artists
01:16were moving in.
01:17I really wanted to pull out the things that were specific and thought-provoking and interesting
01:23because it's not just about Soho, but it's also my client and his lifestyle.
01:32There's the formal architectural language that we can use, but I think what we were
01:37trying to achieve was an emotional effect.
01:41And we knew which tools to use to get us to that point.
01:45The first things that were kind of firing off in my brain were really about the 70s.
01:50That was a huge jumping off point.
01:52We were looking at a ton of different references from Joe Dorso to Bray Schabel to the famous
01:58Calvin Klein apartment back in the day.
02:00I wanted carpeted platforms, I wanted black and white, I wanted some starkness, I wanted
02:05things to be sleek.
02:07Lots of glass block, lots of gridded tile, lots of low-slung furniture, lots of built-in
02:12furniture, lots of wall-to-wall carpet.
02:14Things that I think people might be a little afraid of, I was really willing to really
02:19go there.
02:20And luckily, my client was also so game.
02:24For me, the biggest challenges were getting light into the apartment, it was the economics
02:31of the renovation, and it was the layout, packing everything that we could into a limited
02:36floor plan.
02:42It was pretty dark, so I was pretty quick to say, let's embrace what we have, let's
02:47maybe embrace some of the darkness, let's think about a long hallway that's all one
02:52deep dark color that is this sort of transition zone from the outside world into your beautiful
02:58new apartment.
03:02The contrast between the light and the dark makes the light spaces feel lighter.
03:07Tenants of Louis Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright, the idea of compression, the idea of release,
03:14these are all architectural ideas that I think drive home the light and dark.
03:19The bedroom here got some light, but I didn't really want to call attention to the bedroom
03:23whenever you are in the living room.
03:25I wanted the bedroom to sort of fade away, so we decided, let's paint the bedroom black.
03:30We're creating a multitude of spaces within one space.
03:34We have a large open area, but we're starting to carve out special segments within that
03:39to get a lighter feeling apartment where we wanted it.
03:44The finishes in the kitchen are all about sleek, all about sexy.
03:54We used marble, but instead of doing honed finishes, I wanted to think about making it
03:59polished to where it would bounce the light into the apartment.
04:02I really wanted to see a stainless steel kitchen, so the materiality, it definitely references
04:07the sort of industrial past of Soho.
04:10Stainless steel has this beautiful effect where it's sort of half polished and it's
04:14half matte, sort of a satin effect, so as the light changes throughout the day, it really
04:20warms up, the shadows dance beautifully across the surface, and it really makes the space
04:24come alive.
04:25There's a lot of mirror in this apartment.
04:29The core of the new kitchen and the new bathrooms, the top two feet are wrapped in a mirror that
04:35essentially reflects the tin ceilings throughout the space.
04:38We had a whole new HVAC system placed in this apartment.
04:41There were window units at the time, and I said, absolutely not, will we have window
04:45units in a brand new renovation, and so we dropped Soffit up there and had beautiful
04:50slotted HVAC in the mirror that you can't even really see unless you know where to look.
05:00One of the other big problems was the layout of the apartment.
05:03It was sort of open, yet choppy at the same time.
05:06We were going to completely gut it, but we also had very strict limitations about what
05:09we could do in terms of wet over dry.
05:12Wet over dry is essentially where the rooms in the apartment that have plumbing, the kitchen,
05:17the bathroom, the laundry room, they have to be within a certain footprint.
05:21The apartment below has a certain area where the kitchen and bathrooms are, and we could
05:26not go over that limit.
05:27If there was a leak, we can't have any leaks happening in a dry area below.
05:31The client had this vision from the beginning, and he was like, I want this sort of a wet
05:35room, an open shower with a tub in my apartment.
05:39What we wanted to do was to keep the two bathrooms, and we also had to have a separate laundry
05:43room.
05:44We also needed to have closet space.
05:46There were no closets in this apartment whatsoever.
05:48It was a really tall order, involved so many different layouts and sketching until we could
05:53figure out how to get what he wanted, and this is where we ended up.
06:00The wet over dry aspect of the unit actually helped us out because we realized that we
06:06could sneak the kitchen into the living room if we maintained an island that did not have
06:12plumbing.
06:13So you can sort of see here where originally the kitchen created a sort of U effect at
06:19this point around these columns, and by pushing that out and making a sort of galley style
06:23kitchen, a sort of bar of storage here, we really gained a lot of footprint in this area.
06:30What we could do was sneak the laundry room into the very, very back of the apartment,
06:35and we knew that perhaps it would make sense for the laundry room to be accessed through
06:39the main closet.
06:40You know, you get ready, you have your clothes, at the end of the day, you put your clothes
06:43away by the washer dryer with a built-in hamper.
06:46What we wanted to do was to maintain that footprint, but really dress it up, really
06:51have something that felt very special, very unique.
06:55What we have in this renovation, we've managed to keep all of the original materiality on
07:01the perimeter.
07:02We have the original brick.
07:03We have the original tin ceilings.
07:04We simply painted it.
07:05We painted it white, or we painted it black.
07:08To contrast that, we have this idea of a sort of cube that lands in the apartment.
07:12So we're sort of standing in that threshold right now between the old and the new, that
07:17original space between the public and the private.
07:20It's architectural intervention, where the stainless steel contrasts with the brick and
07:26the tin ceilings.
07:27It's a jewel box within a jewel box.
07:29It feels very modern, and at the same time, it feels quite warm and inviting.
07:39We were also working within a rather defined budget.
07:43You know, we have this beautiful loft, but we can't spend a fortune renovating it, and
07:47it needed a lot of work.
07:49The first couple of times that we talked to contractors, they were telling us numbers
07:53that were three or four times the budget that we had planned for.
07:56So we had to be really, really intelligent about the materials that we used.
08:00For instance, in the bathrooms here, we originally proposed doing a beautiful marble slab.
08:07That as an example is perfect because it, again, lends itself to that sort of 70s look.
08:14The gridded tile, gridded patterns was very prominent then.
08:18So even though we had economic constraints, it led us to an aesthetic result that was
08:24very true to our original references.
08:27We have this really incredible round shower made out of glass block.
08:32Again, very Soho, very 1970s, also quite economical.
08:36The shower was an element of the apartment that really had a lot of different lives.
08:41We had probably 20 different renderings of the shower, and really, it was incredibly
08:46important for us from the beginning because our client was like, if someone's taking
08:50a shower and I'm in bed, I want to sort of see a silhouette, but I don't want to see
08:54everything.
08:56So it was, how do we achieve that?
08:59The first thing that we tried to do was a ribbed glass.
09:03If you are looking for ribbed glass that is curved, good luck.
09:06It is very, very, very expensive.
09:07You have to go to Italy to find it, and good luck getting it shipped and into a New York
09:11City apartment.
09:12We then decided to look at curved glass that was maybe frosted, but that felt a bit too
09:16millennial, a bit 2000s.
09:18It really wasn't the effect we were going for, even though it was about half the cost
09:22of the fluted glass.
09:23It wasn't until down the process, many weeks of emailing people and calling people and
09:30trying to speak Italian, that we arrived at doing glass block.
09:34It was maybe a tenth of the cost of the original quote of the fluted round glass.
09:39And what's crazy is that it was in front of us the whole time, in a way.
09:42There were so many references of all of these New York-specific 1970s design books where
09:48glass block was so prominent, and it was all in Soho.
09:53By doing the budget of the renovation, the kitchen, the bathrooms, the moving of walls,
09:59the creating of this sort of wet room scenario, a lot of the budget was eaten up just in the
10:05architecture.
10:06We didn't have too much budget left over for furniture.
10:08So down the road, as we got to that point, we realized, okay, the built-in furniture
10:13actually makes a ton of sense.
10:15I could design the sofa for half of the cost of buying something.
10:18We could create a bed that felt as though it was a part of the architecture, a part
10:22of the floor even, for a third of the cost.
10:25It's always something that I've loved.
10:27Every time I open up a book and I see a built-in sofa or a built-in bed, it excites me.
10:32I get a lot of requests for something in living rooms in all of my projects.
10:37This one made the most sense to tackle that.
10:39We have the sofa here.
10:40We have the bedroom behind me.
10:42How can we have a sliding door that's open, but still have a separation in space?
10:48We decided pretty early on that this would be a great opportunity to raise up a platform,
10:53to carpet it fully, and to have a sort of rise and fall from the bedroom to the living
10:58room.
10:59It's an emotional thing.
11:00You sort of step up, and then you release into the bedroom.
11:03You have this carpeted platform that really lends itself well into just going up the wall,
11:07into the bed, into the headboard.
11:09And what it does in the living room is that it creates the base of the sofa.
11:12And this was a reference directly from Ghiolinte's apartment in Milan, where she had a wraparound
11:17sofa carpeted.
11:19And you have these cushions that sit on top, and it creates this sort of low-slung sofa
11:23situation where, you know, you can fit 22 people, 25 people around here very easily.
11:29I felt kind of like Anne Hathaway in Devil Wears Prada when I got this project.
11:38As soon as I saw the address and I saw the building, I was like, this is very, very exciting.
11:43There's a lot to work with here.
11:45Yes, we dove into all of the details, and we were up late at night and in the morning
11:50refining cove lighting details and corner details and mitering and all of the things
11:55that make a project happen.
11:57But I would say that really from the first couple of weeks, the overall vision, the overall
12:02concept was really driven home.
12:05And from the beginning until the end of that design process, we really did not stray too
12:10far from where we started.