Glass walls by Tom Filisia

Tom Filicia became famous all over America as one of the participants in the reality show “The Blue Is Watching You”, in which gay experts teach straight people (such a simple guy) the basics of style and the ability to present themselves. But when Tom begins to talk about what really enthralls him, it turns out that in his heart he is none other than a simple guy who loves simple things. Unglazed ceramics, straw mats and worn floors are at the top of his personal charts. “I love things that are simple, clean, honest and at the same time courageous,” he says. Tom is even more attracted to water. “Pools, lakes, oceans – whatever, I don’t get out of them!” – Philisia admits. As a teenager, he was seriously interested in swimming and even competed in his hometown of Syracuse. Having matured, he gave up professional sports, but the love for water remained. Usually Tom’s days are spent in a film studio (his latest project on television is a design show called Decorate My Nest) or on the road (he decorates apartments, is on the jury of competitions, collects money for an art museum built in his hometown according to project by Yo Ming Pei). Filisia spends a rare weekend in her apartment in Soho and enjoys the view from the windows. “Cruise liners, barges, yachts – I can see everything from here!” – says the designer, looking at the panorama of the Hudson River sparkling in the sun, stretching only two blocks from his entrance, – from the wreckage of an abandoned pier that looks like a broken tooth to the coastline of neighboring New Jersey looming on the horizon.

When Filisia was drawing up the bill of sale for this apartment, a large hole gaped at the site of the building. “But the developer promised that I could see half of Manhattan from the windows.” Seeing the finished interior – the apartment, as is customary in America, was sold with finishing – Filisia decided that the space was definitely lacking in refinement. The kitchen combined with the living room, with light wood cabinets and a glass apron, was depressing with an indistinct design. The cherry wood floors were varnished to the point that they shone like plastic. “The architectural details looked like they had been ordered over the phone from Skirting Boards Delivery,” the designer jokes. – The interior seemed too bland. I wanted to cheer him up a little. ”

A little effort – and the thin metal frames of the door casings were replaced with powerful wooden ones. In place of the old skirting boards, new ones, 20 centimeters high, appeared – with their help Tom managed to disguise the radiators located at the floor level. Painted in the same color as the skirting boards, they are almost invisible. A wide frieze appeared under the ceiling; it also added piquancy to the interior. To the white walls, Tom stuck square sheets of taffeta wallpaper in a checkerboard pattern, a nod to the parchment panels of 1930s French designer Jean-Michel Franck. The kitchen has been transformed by numerous stainless steel fittings and several layers of glossy gray paint – the same color has been applied to the doors throughout the apartment. The recessed light fixtures have been replaced by chandeliers with blown glass shades that cast spectacular irregular shadows on the walls. The floorboards were sanded and painted ebony. Tom didn’t cover them with protective varnish. He is not afraid of scratches and allows his dog Paco to run around the apartment as much as he pleases (Filisia picked him up on the street, feeling sorry for the animal that crossed the road under the blizzard). Tom is not one of the fanatical aficionados of order who force guests to take off their shoes and thus mercilessly destroy the integrity of their elaborate outfits. “I’m not a sissy: I even like it when the floor is properly trampled.”

The most significant change in the interior turned out to be the most controversial. At least from the point of view of Tom’s boyfriend, marketer Greg Kalejo. He goes mad with anger over Tom’s courageous decision to tear down the wall between the bedroom and living room and replace it with reinforced glass. The same glass, but with a mirror coating, is glued to the wall behind the bed. “I paid money for the view,” Tom explains. “And for my hard-earned money I want to get maximum pleasure.” Kalejo has his own views on pleasure, so at the first opportunity he draws the curtains that hang along the glass wall. But when they are open, the magnificent views of the Hudson can be admired from almost anywhere in the apartment. In the evening, when the river surface plunges into darkness, it is partly replaced by the stormy sea, depicted on a huge canvas in the living room.

The apartment is located in the city center. At the same time, many elements of its decor are reminiscent of Tom’s summer house, standing on the lake in the “wild”, rural part of New York. There, provincial architecture serves as a backdrop for “urban” furniture and art objects. Here, the opposite is true: a corner of the village idyll has been created in an angularly modernist shell – with an abundance of rough textures and references to historical roots. XNUMXth century Italian chairs sit on an exotic abaca rug *. The deep sofa, designed by Filisia, is covered with suede, around the dining table there are chairs with rope backs and seats. Tom came up with a white console table with a leg in the shape of an eagle, watching an eagle soaring over a lake in the vicinity of a summer house. As a result, the object resembles a product from the times of the first American presidents, adapted to modern tastes, but retaining a naive revolutionary enthusiasm (at the time when the United States had just achieved independence, local artisans used the figure of an eagle – a symbol of the state – wherever possible). “Design is the art of balance,” concludes Filisia. – After all the throwing from one extreme to another, it is so nice to find a middle ground in the end.