After several decades away from the show-house circuit, legendary architect Robert A.M. Stern with Lauren Kruegel and Ross Alexander, a new leadership at at Robert A.M. Stern Interiors, are taking part in the 2017 Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club Decorator Show House (at the Lenox Hill Town House, 125 East 65th St.; through Thursday, June 1) Stern and his team glamorized Charles Platt’s brown wood-paneled dining room with bold colors; one wall of yellow Venetian plaster features large framed fragments of Andy Warhol’s 1966 Day-Glo chartreuse and hot pink cow-head wallpaper from Mr. Stern’s personal collection.
For design inspiration Stern and his team looked to Villa Necchi, a 1935 house in Milan designed by Piero Portaluppi, which they admired for its stripped-down classicism in Luca Guadagnino’s 2009 film I Am Love. They combined Italian furniture dating from the 1930s through the 1950s with modern French pieces from the same period. A “Janus” chandelier, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects for Remains Lighting, provides lighting above an all-glass desk by noted Italian designer and architect Gio Ponti. In the window bay; to either side, a pair of 1930s French torchères attributed to Louis Süe in front of antique mirror panels restores the room’s original symmetry.
Stern and his team organized two seating groups—a pair of white Kerstin Hörlin- Holmquist lounge chairs and a blue upholstered wing chair by Melchiorre Bega—on a beige and brown custom net- patterned circular rug by Crosby Street Studio. The chartreuse of the wallpaper is picked up in Dedar silk taffeta on an 11-foot sofa; a small settee is upholstered in a contrasting deep gardenia-leaf green velvet, both specially designed for this installation. Andirons by Gilbert Poillerat accent the firebox and tomato-red plates by Gio Ponti for Richard Ginori line the mantel. A custom mobile by Marco Mahler hangs over a grand piano; behind, William Pettit’s abstract “Nor Night Me” (1969), also from Mr. Stern’s collection, completes the scene.
