Add to Del.icio.us
Digg this Article
Add to Mixx
Dec. 22, 2007. David Sylvester is as ready with this date as he is with his own birthday, or the day he married Kara Heitz. That is when they placed a contract on their McLean, VA, house, which Architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen originally designed in 1971 for a renowned cardiologist, the late W. Proctor Harvey. The Realtor for his widow said Mrs. Harvey was persuaded to sell it to them instead of another bidder because of a heartfelt letter they wrote pledging to preserve Jacobsen’s architecture. “We were really lucky. It’s so rare something like this comes on the market,” Heitz says. They immediately approached Douglas Burton of Apartment Zero, where they had registered for their 2005 wedding and had become regular customers, to design all the interiors.
Their previous apartment at The Watergate had been mid-century modern, but they wanted to bring the look forward. “One of their big points was really to respect the integrity of that [early-’70s] period,” Burton says. “We mixed original pieces from the ’60s and ’70s with pieces that are being designed right now, but the spirit is very ‘pop.’ ”
Updated Vintage
The idea for using a single accent color in each room started with the dining room, when Apartment Zero Designer Raed Alawadhi chose red Panton chairs to echo the lines of the owners’ vintage Knoll Tulip table and red-upholstered Tulip chairs visible through the adjoining kitchen. The team also wanted to combine those vintage pieces with contemporary looks, such as the Italian dining table, custom-upholstered acoustic panels, and Mike Weber’s modern take on an old portrait of Florence Nightingale. The art is a riff on classic dining-room settings “where you have portraits of dowdy old relatives,” Sylvester says.
As Burton and his team designed each space, they kept as many details as they could, such as the original cabinets, pulls, and countertops in the kitchen, the pendant lighting in the dining room and entry hall, and of course, the pristine, trim-less white walls that remain Jacobsen’s signature. “I was so honored they were going to lay hands on my work,” Jacobsen says. “I’ve always been very proud of that house,” he adds, which won eight awards in its day, including two from the American Institute of Architects.
Creating New Spaces
Heitz and Sylvester were delighted with the orange spiral staircase that led up to a light-filled retreat that used to be Dr. Harvey’s home office, which Heitz now uses. A larger perch on the other side of the entry hall had never been finished, although it had the same stunning clerestory and floor-to-ceiling windows. Burton and his team finished that space, and beneath it, converted a guest room and two small bathrooms into a large owners’ bath and dressing room. They also created an alcove for a second spiral staircase to what is now Sylvester’s office.
To visually connect the new office to the old, Burton used an orange pendant light and orange upholstery on three side chairs, recalling the stairway visible across the hall through Jacobsen’s wall cut-outs.
“I think we actually improved on the architect’s intent of opening up spaces” on this side of the house, says Designer Kristin Paradies. The original owners’ bedroom was left intact, with a wall of windows that open onto a rear deck overlooking two acres of forested property.
