A Bond Street Loft Renovated by Nasser Nakib

In 2016, Nasser Nakib bought the unit of the top floor in 21 Bond Street for himself and his three sons, who were adolescents at the time. The only thing that lacked? A fireplace. “I thought, okay, I should understand this one by myself,” he says.
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

When Nasser Nakib entered for the first time in the top floor at 21 Bond, a revival Storefront and-Foft Renaissance outlaw next to Lafayette, it was a “boring” white box. The previous owner had been a German sculptor and painter who used dull walls as a backdrop for his work. Nakib, a architect whose company has wrapped the Illi in the nomad with Red cedar trellis And more recently, renovated a quadruplex of the penthouse in the San Remo, wanted something warmer. “You want to live in a fishing,” he said, as in James and giant fishing. However, he could not resist the configuration of the upper ground – and the address. While working as a junior architect in Soho in the 80s, he passed Bond Street during his lunch breaks, fantasizing about a life in the middle of the cobblestones. “When you go to Provence and you stand in the middle of a lavender field, you are like, I could die here happily,“He says.” In New York, that’s all. “”

He closed on the loft in 2016 and started what would become a project of several years to transform the anti-septic space into an intimate nest that he could share with his three sons. The strap fell, exposing dirt and 19th century beams. The entrepreneurs cut a solid light well in the center of the 14 -foot ceiling show, leaving even more sun. Loft floors, which had been “beaten to death,” said Nakib, were replaced by 200 -year -old white oak boards Denen. The idea was to live in the marrow of space, which dates back to 1893. “I didn’t want a neutral apartment,” says Nakib. “I wanted it to be faithful to himself.”

21 Bond Street, built in 1893, counted Among its first tenants a coffin company and a high -end leather factory; More recently, the Late figurative artist Emma Amos Had a studio on the second floor, and the guest of Gigi Hadid to the Residence brand now occupies the commercial space on the ground floor.
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

At the start of the renovations, Nakib lived abroad, juggling projects in Italy, France and Lebanon. With his wife now a woman, Julia, the couple spent part of this time crossing Europe, appearing in axes and bazaars to fill the 2,400 square feet of the apartment. At the Paris flea market, the pair has found a Provençal wooden and wooden coat Trumeau, that Nakib used to build the large fireplace that anchors the living room. A visit to Marcellus led them to the mirror now decorated in the master bedroom. During his online studies in Beirut, Nakib came across an old cabinet of the Antiquity Slegers church in Belgium, which he used to display his collection of European cars played from the 1970s and Fornasetti Plateware. “Antiquities have continued to enter,” he says. Among them was a long dining table British craftsman Robert ThompsonWho had remained more or less unpacked in the apartment until Nakib moved to the loft at the end of 2019.

The cabinet of the ancient church of Belgium presents the sentence “Ite ad joseph“(” Go to Joseph “) and display the collection of Nakib’s childhood toys.” It is especially all the cars that I would have liked in the 70s when I was a child. Each Maserati, each Lamborghini, each Jaguar. And the Mercedes 600, in case I became president. »»
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

Nakib says that he has spent more than 25 years in search of a ten -foot long table by the British furniture manufacturer Robert Thompson, known as “Mouseman” for his signature of mouse sculpture in his furniture. Modular steel cabinets are USM Haller shelves.
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

Nakib chemically removed his entrepreneurs three layers of paint on the brick walls and shoot the plate on the ceiling, exposing the beams. It has installed Erco lighting from Germany, including the projectors and the wall washers.
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

At this stage, the sons of Nakib, who spent much of their childhood in Beirut when their father commute between Lebanon and New York, had grown. He wanted the space to offer them a house but also a “springboard”, he says, for their post-university life. Nakib designed three identical bedrooms, each equipped with a King-size bed and an integrated office, plus a divided oak wardrobe, in case a friend or a partner ends up crashing. To give boys a visual feeling of separation, he added pagoda style lamps in cast iron and green slate tiles – as if an external wall had been brought inside. “I wanted the children’s rooms to feel like leaving the apartment and going to their apartments, ”he says. The breathing space has extended to a basement storage area, where Nakib posed a two -inch thick rubber floor and installed a DJ Studio – Slash – Gym for its sons. (“I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a child, but my children wanted to be DJs,” he said.)

The kitchen is equipped with miele devices, Rosso Verona marble counters, a Lucien sink with elimination, vintage dental light from the 1920s and a tailor-made pantry. The editorial chairs, from the 1950s, were manufactured by Société Générale de Feu. “They are not identical,” says Nakib, “but they are wonderful.”
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

Nakib has incorporated green slate tiles and cast iron lamps on the walls outside the bedrooms from three wires to help distinguish space like theirs. “They are of an age when it is not like” hey, everyone “all the time. I don’t sometimes see them for two to three days. It’s cool, ”he says.
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

Nakib may have believed that he could die happy on Bond Street, but now, with his children out of the university and pursuing their own career, the 62-year-old seeks to reduce his workforce. “I would like to separate us and keep an eye for them,” he says. “I did it all from nothing. Now you.” He is ready to leave fishing with Julia, and it is unlikely that his next apartment requires so much effort. “The next place for me in New York will be a type of hotel configuration,” says Nakib. He wants to play tennis, swim and drink good wine. “I don’t need more than that.”

Nakib says he learned over the years that Bond Street is a particularly calm block thanks to the pavers: “I did not realize until I saw here that fire trucks do not like Bond Street and that ambulances do not like Bond Street. For what? Because fire trucks will jump everywhere. ”
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

The bathroom has an empire mahogany vanity with mirror walls.
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

Nakib found the vanity of the second bathroom in a London antiquity store, where the staff used it as a office for their cash register. “What a more perfect label for a bathroom could you have,” he says.
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

Nakib bought the first of the two camphor trunks in the primary chamber for $ 28,000 in Ann-Morris Ancien in New York in 2000. A few years ago, he found the second trunk of a trip to London and managed to do it for a relative business: “I sat with the guy for three hours to try to speak so sweet, and turns out to be all that he wanted to be 5,000 pounds.”
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

The master bedroom also has steel windows facing south, oak cabinets from floor to ceiling and a second fireplace.
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios

The bathroom following the primary bedroom was designed with heated French terracotta tiles, a porcelain cast iron bathtub and a hairdresser shower.
Photo: Al Siedman Photography for VHT studios