Sam Fentress
Living on America's eastern coastline, this couple grew accustomed to an ever-changing view of the Atlantic, the world's second-largest ocean. When relocating here, their self-imposed challenge was to introduce some sort of water feature into a 5,500-square-foot condominium.
First, the couple considered a waterfall. Their designer, New Yorker Lee Najman, hesitated. An interior waterfall for clients in landlocked Clayton, on the 24th floor of a high-rise? Plus, since the waterfall wouldn't always be turned on, would it look, during off-hours, as enthralling as a fish tank without fish? Would it, heaven forbid, smell? Attract mold?
So much for a real waterfall, laughs the wife, whose previous collaboration with Mr. Najman (pronounced NAY-man) proved so mutually satisfying that he tried to hire her to buy accessories for his business. Mr. Najman, who was born in Belgium, heads up Lee Najman Designs, Inc., of Port Washington, N.Y., a hamlet on the north shore of Long Island.
While brainstorming with his clients, who have two grown sons and a daughter in college, the designer announced: "Let's do something outrageous. Let's take traditional design and push it to the limit." Because the wife adores window seating, Mr. Najman had built 45 feet of window seats into their former home, nearly spanning the periphery of the living room. That home also had 26-foot ceilings and a spiral staircase.
In St. Louis, the designer engaged the couple's shared sense of adventure and playfulness. One of the most remarkable features to emerge was an entry-hall focal point, a taupe/charcoal-gray granite simulation of a waterfall or a lava flow. It starts as a single point on the entry-hall ceiling, widens slightly as it "flows" toward the intersection of the ceiling and a wall, then appears to gush down the wall, where it surges massively and wavelike onto the entry hall's otherwise linear floor. All this, and not a splotch of water, a speck of mold.
To deepen the entry-hall drama, the designer added a secondary ceiling and a wall atop the granite wall, making it appear as though the now-recessed waterfall/lava flow has etched its way into its surroundings. What's more, the extra ceiling and wall provide a soffit for lighting the granite.
Meanwhile, views from the adjoining living room beckon. With no more than occasional shimmery coverage by drapery sheers, the couple's cloud-level casement windows—they really open—showcase, in a stunning fashion, metropolitan St. Louis. "There's enough fascination outside that we didn't put anything frilly on the windows," Mr. Najman says.
Mr. Najman has been decorating interiors for the past 32 years. His educational background, while not formally in design, did include engineering, architecture, construction, sculpting and various sciences. For this project, he applied his mathematician's skills to the condo's floor plan.
Everything radiates from a single point, located not far from the living room's cluster of three "pods," or round, small tables, near the orange-and-brown sofa. From that point, imagine pivoting a compass to draw a series of arcs. The condo's main structural curves, including the freestanding curved wall behind the sofa and the curved wall that anchors the cocktail bar, are parts of concentric circles, all sharing the same center.
Not that everyone necessarily grasps the geometry, but the overall effect is somehow comforting. "You can relate to the space," Mr. Najman says. "There's something about it that's both exciting and calming."
And surprising. Much of the floor is composed of 6 by 6-foot squares of orangey Santos mahogany hand-laid at right angles to squares of gray-taupe maple. As a result, all of the mahogany squares go in one direction, all the maple in another.
For walls, Mr. Najman favors wallpaper or fabric with a wallpaper-like backing. "For sophistication, texture and softness, a wallcovering puts paint to shame," he says.
Also appealing and sophisticated: The square glass-topped dining-room table, which is supported by eight slender steel columns clustered at the table's center, far from diners' dangling legs. Both the round coffee-table-like pods and the textured copper–and–metallic laminate kitchen divider are mounted on wheels, so they can be rolled wherever they are needed most.
Now in her sixth year of condo residency, the wife explains that the space was "really designed for my family. It's very nice. It's very comfortable." And even without an ocean within hundreds of miles, for now it's home.
