In the kitchen, with cabinetry by Arclinea, is an iridescent-tile backsplash. At the Corian-topped counter sit four Lucite and white-ultrasuede bar stools from the eighties. The mounted skull is a blesbok, an African antelope.
(Photo: David Allee)
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The apartment’s late-seventies-luxury interior architecture was done by Lobel’s close friend Greg Sharp, who was responsible for the white-granite floors, track lighting, and the pièce de résistance: the massive wood-veneered central cylinder that houses Lobel’s walk-in closet (it peeks out at the end of the hallway). In the entry way is a serigraph by James Rosenquist. The guest bathroom, right, features massive African slate tiles and a teak sink.
(Photo: David Allee)
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Left, a painting by David Leventhal hangs above a lacquer cabinet by Tommi Parzinger for Parzinger Originals from the sixties. The handblown vases are by Giorgio Ferro for AVEM. Right, a stainless-steel ladder gives access (and a bit of ornament) to a wall of Arclinea kitchen cabinetry.
(Photo: David Allee)
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The bedroom, with Frette linens from ABC Carpet & Home, is lined with wall-to-wall drapes, a favorite eighties-decorator touch.
(Photo: David Allee)
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Left, in a sitting area, a pair of fifties Dunbar chairs flank a coffee table of smoked glass, brass, and gunmetal by Karl Springer, near Lobel’s eccentric collection of twentieth-century Italian art glass. Right, Lobel’s sleek bachelor closet, includes a Karl Springer python-framed mirror.
(Photo: David Allee)
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A chrysocolla formation from Astro Gallery sits atop an eighties travertine coffee table from Pace Collection. A flat-screen TV slides out from a cabinet hidden to the right of the travertine fireplace.
(Photo: David Allee)
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The good news: There’s a hot new period to collect. The bad news: It’s the eighties. Karl Springer, Angelo Donghia, and the Michael Taylor pillow chop are back.
By David Colman 
It feels like 1984: Evan Lobel’s living and dining room, with Angelo Donghia dining chairs and a Charles Hollis Jones glass-and-Lucite dining table. The sofa, from Christian Liaigre, is new but consistent with the period’s sleek, low, luxe aesthetic.
(Photo: David Allee)
Looking back at the pop landscape of the early eighties can provoke pangs of dread. Running shoes on working women? Asymmetrical haircuts and eyeliner on men? Black Pirelli tile on the floor, gray carpet on the wall, neon color splashes on everything?
Stay calm. The mid-century revival didn’t mean resuscitating poodle skirts and the Technicolor palette, and there’s good design lurking beneath all that mousse. After many prestigious furniture companies went under or slashed quality in the mid-seventies recession, some of the best design went private. Designers-cum-decorators including New Yorkers Karl Springer and Angelo Donghia and Californians Charles Hollis Jones and Michael Taylor (widely acknowledged as the man who popularized the pillow-denting styling flourish that became known as “the chop”) routinely had lavish work custom-made for clients. Twenty-five years later, there’s a lode of interesting, beautifully crafted pieces still awaiting a wide audience.
Just as the mid-modern revival was fueled by enthusiastic dealers like Mark McDonald, circa-1980 design has the New York furniture dealer Evan Lobel squarely in its gold-plated corner. “I love the late seventies and eighties,” says Lobel. He’s even writing a book on Springer, his favorite designer, who’s best known for cladding simple but dramatic pieces of furniture in sharkskin and python. Subtle they’re not. “There’s a certain decadence to that era that I find really appealing. The scale tends to be large, and the materials tend to be luxe and rich, which makes the pieces themselves larger than life.”
And if his new Bond Street store doesn’t make the moment’s appeal clear, Lobel’s splashy Union Square apartment does. Outfitted with white granite floors, beige-draped windows and walls, and enough track lighting to melt a glacier, the apartment is the perfect place to showcase the oversize, Chablis-and-brie-fueled extremes of which Lobel is so enamored. The sum total is that rare thing—a very polished bachelor’s apartment, harking back to a time before mixing became the predominant aesthetic and done was not a four-letter word. The centerpiece is a massive Christian Liaigre sofa, ornamented with two giant Missoni-esque pillows, meticulously chopped. It’s the perfect place to sit and contemplate the meteorlike chunk of chrysocolla, one of Lobel’s favorite possessions.
He takes the eighties commitment only so far, though (no razor-blade marks on the massive coffee table). Lobel’s primary vice is thoroughly contemporary. “I’m a workaholic,” he says. “I just want someplace fantastic to come home to.”
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French starchitect Jean Nouvel’s 40 Mercer reimagines the quintessential New York apartment house downtown, with river views.
By David Colman 
Left, Jean Nouvel in one of 40 Mercer’s apartments, many of which have either red or blue glass accent windows. Right, looking up at the mammoth blue-glass-louvered brise-soleil at the top of the building’s Broadway façade, a reimagined cornice that refers to the neighboring nineteenth-century rooflines.
(Photo: Todd Eberle)
Breaking ground is all well and good, but it can also be argued that the best architects are those who give into that most human urge: to reproduce.
That thought is crystallized in famed French architect Jean Nouvel’s gleaming new Soho apartment house, 40 Mercer, a vision in red, blue, steel, and wood. Quieter, cleverer, and more lavish than Richard Meier’s Perry Street towers, 40 Mercer pays homage not only to its neighboring nineteenth-century cast-iron buildings (and their fifteenth-century Florentine forebears) but to a host of twentieth-century greats: Mondrian, Barragan, Mies van der Rohe. And yet it is utterly seductive as a unique and intriguing work of architecture.
There are a thousand little points of reference. The bracketed cornice on the east façade and the boxy, planar Palladian windows on the rear are a reference to nearby Broadway façades. Inside, the wood-and-stainless-steel kitchens nod to Eames, and the sleek, multiple-veneered and back-painted glass-tile bathrooms recall Parisian Art Deco luxury. Those touches might be lost on some, although not on Todd Eberle, one of today’s best-known architectural photographers and a contributor at Vanity Fair. For him, 40 Mercer was love at first sight. He and longtime boyfriend Richard Pandiscio were among the first people to move into the building late last month; these photos document the move.
“I love how Nouvel references the history of Soho and how seriously he took the responsibility of putting a building in that historic area,” said Eberle, who is more used to photographing starchitect buildings that spring up like magic mushrooms, irrespective of place. “This isn’t an arrogant, arriviste building,” he said. “There’s a soul in this building, and that comes from Nouvel’s dialogue with the history around it.”
Of course, one might expect Eberle to be charitably inclined to 40 Mercer, given that Pandiscio—the marketing mind behind the Neue Galerie, Cipriani Wall Street, and the Urban Glass House—has also done 40 Mercer’s branding campaign.
But even buying one of the building’s smaller apartments— a hardly humble,1,700-square-foot two-bedroom enfilade and the only one whose windows have both red and blue panes of the colored glass that makes the building so Mondrian-esque—was a severe financial stretch, a testament to both men’s affinity for the place. It also makes a supreme location for the couple’s collection of Donald Judd furniture and sculpture.
Even now, when all the apartments are long sold and Pandiscio could easily stop gushing, he says that his initial sales pitch of world-class luxury totally missed the mark. “It wasn’t until the place was more or less done that I really got in it, and got to see that Nouvel is all about light and reflection and volume and proportion,” he says. “I felt like I had kind of failed.” Hardly.
The Library and a View of the Building 
Left, a massive Donald Judd library table and chairs (soon to be joined by other pieces) have an ideal home in Eberle and Pandiscio’s apartment. Right, view of the building.
(Photo: Todd Eberle)
Building Views 
Views of the building, inside and out.
(Photo: Todd Eberle)
Touches of Mondrian 
Left, the building’s kitchens, finished with a variety of beautiful woods, recall the shelving designed by Charles and Ray Eames. Right, the building’s references to Mondrian are playful but contribute to its overall sense of serenity.
(Photo: Todd Eberle)
The Next Everything
Hurowitz’s daughter hangs out in a Nest high chair (another circle) under Rody Graumans’s 85 Lamps (available at Moss). The Ikea dining table was meant to be temporary. It was paired with Marcel Wanders’s “New Antiques” chairs, designed for Cappellini, which play on the American spindle style. Hurowitz’s home office is at the back, screened in a custom-made cubicle designed by WORKac and made of earthy Dakota Burl strand board to contrast with all that plastic. The bookshelves here and elsewhere are California Closets—relatively inexpensive, and all removable.
(Photo: Adam Friedberg)
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“I am not a pastel person, so I didn’t want my daughter to have this sweet baby room,” Hurowitz says. “I wanted it to be much more charged, but still feminine.” The crib and settee are by ducduc, the teddy bears by the Campana brothers, and the stuffed flower by Takashi Murakami. More Japanese toys from Yoyamart keep company with an absurdist Maurizio Cattelan photo.
(Photo: Adam Friedberg)
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Dining Room
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