When Simon Elkaim hired an architect to redesign his Manhattan apartment, his opinion on color was clear: the bolder and more vibrant, the better.
There is a simple reason for this preference. “I’m color blind,” said Mr. Elkaim, 69, an international real estate developer.
In particular, he can see pure, bright colors such as blue, red, and yellow, but has difficulty distinguishing more subtle, muddy hues. “Colors that are very similar,” he said, “are very difficult for me” — including dull greens and browns and grays and pinks.
He also has an adventurous taste in art and design, which has led to a penchant for interiors with sculptural shapes in captivating colors.
This made Mr. Elkaim a dream client for his architect, Crina Arghirescu Rogard. “We both love extravagant design,” she said. “We immediately noticed that our aesthetic preferences were similar and pointed in the same direction.”
Mr. Elkaim, whose primary residence is in Switzerland, had purchased the 2,400-square-foot TriBeCa condo for $3.4 million when the building was completed in 2009 and planned to use it as a second home. But over the years he divorced, let his daughters live in the apartment while they attended college in New York, and married Kirsten Lewis, a New York-based actress and performance artist.
After spending more time in Manhattan in 2019, he realized he wasn't happy with the apartment as it was. “I came here after a difficult divorce, I had a new wife and I wanted a new environment,” he said. “I also love decorating.”
Ms. Arghirescu Rogard obliged, planning what she called “a complete reconfiguration of the space.”
For the living room, she collaborated with artist Liz Hopkins and designed wall shelves in fiery red lacquer as well as two daybeds that can be attached under the shelves or pulled out into the room. Around a red-painted Francesco Balzano coffee table, she installed a royal blue Max Lamb chair made of polystyrene with a rubber polymer coating and a resin stool by Floris Wubben coated in blue-purple epoxy.
In the kitchen, Ms. Arghirescu Rogard installed cabinets along one wall and then added two semicircular islands in the center of the room, made of polished steel on the outside and brushed steel on the inside. Above the steel, curved glass rises to the ceiling.
As Ms. Lewis, 47, put it: “It looks like a spaceship.”
Above the adjacent dining table, Ms. Arghirescu Rogard hung a custom chandelier by Guillermo Santoma that mixes multicolored metal and acrylic with reflective foil and a neon sign that reads, “This is not art.”
But it was the new master bathroom that received the boldest pop of color. After discovering a shared affinity for International Klein Blue, an electric color named after the artist Yves Klein, Mr. Elkaim and Ms. Arghirescu Rogard decided that there would be few things more beautiful than a large bathtub in that exact shade. To achieve this, they had Facture Studio create a resin bathtub housed in a large blue block that extends through a metal-and-glass wall from the bathroom to the master bedroom.
“I love Little Blue,” Mr. Elkaim said.
“I love that he was open to the boldest and boldest design choices I proposed,” said Ms. Arghirescu Rogard.
Construction began in March 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, so the project experienced delays that dragged out work for more than two years. The renovated apartment was finally finished last December and cost about $1.2 million.
The transition from a condominium with top-notch interiors to a home that reflected all of his preferences was worth it, Mr. Elkaim said. While the result may be startling to some people, “it's homey to me,” he said. “I feel more and more like I’m in my cocoon when I’m in the apartment.”
Fortunately, Ms. Lewis was just as happy. “It’s an amazing space,” she said. “Sometimes modern apartments can be very cold, but in this apartment there is a certain warmth. It is comfortable.”
That's one reason they plan to spend more time in New York in the coming years.
“We travel almost every month,” said Mr. Elkaim, who has business interests in several countries. “But the place where we are probably most rooted right now is New York.”
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