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By adding walls, pocket doors and butler’s pantries to kitchens, Nicholas Potts prioritizes moments of peace at home
The residences at 111 West 57th Street are among the loftiest in Manhattan, and their floor plans got Nicholas Potts thinking. From 2014 to 2016, he worked at SHoP Architects, the firm behind the sky-high condos, and he watched as Studio Scofield’s interior design team put walls around the building’s kitchens, sitting rooms and wet bars in the larger, more expensive units. To Mr. Potts, this signaled an end to the usual open kitchen.
“Not having to be exposed to tasks you must attend to is probably the most calming thing a person can do,” Mr. Potts said.
He found that consciously sealing the kitchen off from the living room with a door and a wall made a noticeable impact. Separating the rooms made each feel properly proportioned. The living room, now more cocoon-like, was easier to furnish. Thus, what’s old is new again.
“Maybe it’s a post-pandemic thing, but nobody wants an open kitchen,” Mr. Potts said. “They want light and spaciousness, but no one wants a mess. It’s more calming, frankly, to have definition and to be able to remove yourself from a room where somebody might be on a video conference, or where you just made lunch but don’t want to do the dishes yet.”
Mansion Global spoke with Mr. Potts about how adding walls and unexpected finishes to kitchens elevates both working and entertaining from home.
MG: You’ve worked on skyscrapers and cultural institutions in the past. How did you become interested in homes, and specifically, the walls in homes?
Nicholas Potts: With everything in architecture, you take these wild off-ramps and on-ramps, and when I started out, I would have never pictured myself working with houses. My first job was working with cultural institutions, museums, a mausoleum in Minneapolis made of very luxurious materials—stoic, forever buildings.
With the Venice Biennale [international architecture exhibition], I got into the idea of wall application and moldings. Walls are prevalent and they define the spaces we live in, yet they’ve been contested and reworked. They have many theories around them, from being ornamented, to plain, to solid, to light. It’s rich territory, rather than being something that’s just there.
MG: How did this translate to your work on your home’s layout?
NP: I started exploring how we live and the walls that surround us. It started at my own house. We bought a co-op that had been renovated in the ’70s. It was in a lovely 1920s Beaux Arts building. Stuff had been demolished, it was impossible to furnish, the layout was nonsensical and all the ornament had been stripped down. It was a pandemic project. We lived in the apartment below while it was going on. I sourced the same lumber company that provided the millwork and moldings in the original building. Of course, in the floor plan, I wouldn’t do something totally oldschool. We’re a 21st-century family, we’re discovering that during the pandemic, it’s going to be a work-from-home situation.
Find out original article on Mansion Global
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