Nature In The Sky

Glam­orous, unique, ambi­tious. These would be just a few of the key­words that best describe cre­ations by Tony Ingrao and his team through­out their four-decade career. Whether it’s a chic coun­try house or a min­i­mal­ist Mia­mi pent­house, they all have one thing in com­mon: a fear­less mix of var­i­ous styles of fur­ni­ture, peri­ods and mate­ri­als at the high­est lev­el. For this pri­vate New York res­i­dence, locat­ed in the high­est pent­house in Hud­son Yards, they teamed up with Lasvit to cre­ate a one-of-a-kind ceil­ing light, embell­ished with hand-blown glass flowers.

Inspired by nature, the idea was to bring nature into the sky­scraper but also incor­po­rate crys­tals. “The idea was to add a twist at the top of this build­ing, bring the ener­gy through and reflect the inte­ri­or archi­tec­ture to the exte­ri­or archi­tec­ture,” Tony Ingrao says. “When you’re work­ing up in the sky like that, you need to use some ele­ments of nature, that make you feel like you’re con­nect­ed to the world. Oth­er­wise it’d be just a glass and con­crete box – and you wouldn’t feel com­fort­able up there.”

In today’s inte­ri­or archi­tec­ture, light­ing is prob­a­bly the most dom­i­nant fea­ture to devel­op in the last twen­ty years. It can bring emo­tion­al val­ue to archi­tec­ture and helps trans­form it into an excit­ing expe­ri­ence. Light is also capa­ble of play­ing with vol­umes, dis­tort­ing the per­cep­tion of space and even dra­ma­tiz­ing the shapes and tex­tures of the mate­ri­als.“I like to use light as sculp­tures but I don’t like to describe light­ing as mere­ly a source of light. For me it‘s an object, not just a chan­de­lier. You get a far more inter­est­ing approach when you don’t depend on it to just pro­vide light. Then you can appre­ci­ate it more as a beau­ti­ful object and play with the qual­i­ty of the light and the nuance of shad­ows or high­lights,” Ingrao says.

It’s quite sim­ple: peo­ple want to be con­nect­ed to light and also to nature. When you man­age to bring in views, light and nature, it cre­ates a hap­py, pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence. That was also the idea behind this stun­ning tree-shaped chan­de­lier grow­ing from the ceil­ing just above the din­ing table. Not quite what you would expect at the top floor of a sky­scraper. “That’s a thread that ties through all our projects. There’s is always a space for con­nec­tion to nature. Whether it’s at archi­tec­tur­al or dec­o­ra­tive lev­el – in this home the fix­ture starts resem­bling nature in a way, but then it also ties back to bring­ing you out and expand­ing out to the views of nature,” Ingrao says.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion on this Lasvit chan­de­lier began with a hand-drawn sketch by Tony – and took about a year and a half until the final mas­ter­piece was fin­ished. “We gave the com­plete direc­tion and trust to Lasvit with this one. We knew their capa­bil­i­ties, so we total­ly trust­ed them with our vision. They’re able to push the enve­lope, and always recre­ate some­thing that’s nev­er been seen before, such as this beau­ti­ful com­bi­na­tion of met­al and glass­work,” he commented.

His com­pa­ny has an incred­i­ble eye for objects and spaces, cre­at­ing smart inte­ri­ors for demand­ing clients who care a great deal about their homes. He is also sen­si­tive to their per­son­al choic­es, help­ing them express their per­son­al taste through design. Some­times, that may mean dis­cov­er­ing a pas­sion for mod­ern design among for­mer­ly tra­di­tion­al clients.

“Every client has a dif­fer­ent vision of what they want and we can work with any vision they have. We’re respond­ing to their ideas and to who they are as peo­ple,” he explains. “You must under­stand their men­tal­i­ty and what their expec­ta­tions are to be able to design for them. It’s our job to trans­late what they have in mind to real­i­ty,” con­cludes our talk with Tony Ingrao.

Ingrao Inc. is an inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized design and archi­tec­ture firm, focused on both res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial projects in the USA, Israel, Mona­co, France, Rus­sia, Sau­di Ara­bia and Hong Kong. The com­pa­ny, estab­lished by Tony Ingrao and Randy Kem­per in 1982, is com­prised of 36 inte­ri­or design­ers and archi­tects, and is based in New York City. Their work fun­da­men­tal­ly cre­ates close con­nec­tions d their nat­ur­al surroundings.