Alise O'Brien
Renee Bell holds a lovely, shining sphere to the light, and then sets it down on its round, black base. “It’s a petrified mud ball,” she says, laughing, fully aware it’s been polished beyond looking the tiniest bit muddy. It’s part of a huge collection of rock and mineral globes—crystal and quartz, leopard-skin jasper and snowflake obsidian—arranged on inset shelving in her Clayton penthouse.
“I’ve been collecting them for probably 28 years,” she says. “I bought a few”—including the mud ball—“and it just started rolling from there. It’s the only thing we brought from the other house.”
She pauses, then qualifies that statement: Well, she did bring her clothes, too.
When Mrs. Bell and her husband, Andrew, moved to this condo last August, they had been working on it for almost two years. They left a “very traditional” home in Hampton Park, with grass to mow and 5,000 square feet to clean and dust. But unlike some who jump from house to condo, they didn’t downsize; their new home is equally spacious. This move was not about going from large to small, but rather from traditional to classic contemporary. And minimalism takes time to get perfect. “The simpler, the harder,” Mrs. Bell says. “There is no room to fudge anything.”
As president of Waterhout Construction, Mrs. Bell has an uncommon understanding of building processes and materials. When she and Mr. Bell purchased the condo, it was what she calls “a gray box.” But she knew what was possible, and knew what she wanted. First, she brought on longtime business associate and family friend Chuck Schagrin of Amherst Corp. to design the space and serve as general contractor.
“When Renee and Andrew first looked at the space, the building was still under construction,” Mr. Schagrin says. “The walls weren’t yet completed; the roof was just going on. They called me, saying, ‘Will you come over here and discuss the layout?’ It was very different than what is here presently, and did not take advantage of the spaces, or the views. So we made any number of changes. The floor changed, the door and window layout was modified, and we put together a coherent architectural plan,” which included a wraparound balcony on the north, west, and south.
“Part of the whole design gestation idea was to get light from the outside to flow through this space, which also resulted in the two skylights, the sandblasted glass panels, and the very tall doors, so that there’s this notion of light and openness, but still the doors close to hide discreet privacy,” Mr. Schagrin adds.
There is, of course, such thing as too much light, too much open space. The trick to minimalism is not so much emptiness as balance. Mrs. Bell’s office has no windows, which gives her a retreat from the airy lightness that defines the rest of the condo; the common areas are given some weight with what Mr. Schagrin calls “two solid masses,” a powder-room area and the pantry/kitchen, though he was careful to make sure they defined the open areas in a balanced way.
As for finishes: Mrs. Bell knew she wanted the space to be filled with bird’s-eye maple, which is used here for everything from kitchen cabinetry to veneering a niche for the bed in the master suite.
“We had it bleached and dyed in order to take away the yellow, in order to make it beige and taupey,” she says. “And that [the bird’s-eye maple], we got in Italy. So that was a big deal.” Next came the gorgeous but rather problematic dark floors.
“I was fearful of putting in marble floors throughout,” Mrs. Bell says. “It’s just too hard on the legs; it’s hard to stand on that all the time.” The Bells decided instead on long boards of rift-sawn white oak, laid so that there were no discernable seams and stained a dark chocolate. Mr. Schagrin says it was challenging to find a contractor who could do this—but Eurocraft Hardwood Floors, who they found through the Yellow Pages, did the job just right.
It was around this point that Mrs. Bell brought in designer Pamela Calvert, then with Niche/The Lawrence Group.
“She already had a game plan—going minimalist—and she started with the bird’s-eye maple,” Ms. Calvert says. “So we started with the hard surfaces. Then we moved on to fabrics and finishes and lighting and furniture and that type of thing.”
One of the most stunning objects in the condo is a piece of lighting: the “Atlantis” chandelier designed by Barlas Baylar for Terzani, made from four miles of nickel chain cascading over wavy nickel bands. It hangs over the dining-room table, and is echoed in the hallway by John Garrett’s Cascade, a shimmering curtain of hand-hammered silver loops, bands, and chains. And as far as metal goes, even the tiniest bits—including clips holding up a row of frosted-glass panels delineating the boundary between the kitchen and the dining room—took some hunting, planning, and perfecting.
“I had a hard time finding fasteners that I was happy with,” Mrs. Bell says of those clips. “I found those; they’re Japanese. But they didn’t come polished, just brushed. You couldn’t fabricate them, because they’ve got ball bearings inside. That’s what holds the cabling real tight. So you couldn’t dip it, which is what I was hoping I could do. [Mike] Theiss came to the rescue for me—and all they did was just polish them up.”
Though the goal was to get as close as possible to perfection, there was still room for sparkle and whimsy. In the tiny powder room, Ms. Calvert juxtaposed mother-of-pearl tiles, an onyx sink lit from within, crystal light fixtures, and hardware with inset crystal. In Mrs. Bell’s office, the hardware is attached to the drawers sideways, so that each pull resembles an arrow. And in the guest bedroom, there’s a piece of furniture—designed by Mrs. Bell—that appears to be a bookcase with cabinets, but actually folds out into a Murphy bed.
“It’s challenging to accomplish this very clean look without ornamentation,” Mr. Schagrin says. “You can’t hide anything in the crown moldings.” But what offsets this cool and flawless design? Why does this space feel, well—not cold?
“When you do something so minimalist, you need texture,” Ms. Calvert explains, “so the fabrics were pretty key.” That includes not just the colorful rug in the living room and the gauzy window treatments, but the delicate chocolate taffeta used on the walls. Also important were the organic whorls of the bird’s-eye maple; the softness of the frosted glass; even the tiling in the baths where accent tiles were laid in a mosaic style (people think it’s marble—perhaps because the design’s reminiscent of a Roman bath). “We didn’t pop a lot of colors,” Ms. Calvert says, “but to give it a more inviting feel, we used a lot of texture, so it wasn’t just hard surfaces.”
Mr. Schagrin reports that the Bells are “thrilled” with the results. “And they’ve been here since August. Enough time to decide if they are happy or not happy…and I think they are very, very happy.”
“I didn’t anticipate moving into a condominium,” Mrs. Bell says. “That just wasn’t in my mind. My husband wanted to move.” So is she very, very happy?
“I guess if I could describe it, the word would be ‘liberating,’” she says. “Just to step away from 22 years in one place, and all the things that you collect, save, and have.”
And with Mr. Schagrin there as her witness: “She really did leave everything behind.”
