It all started with a sketch.
Each of the 128 guest rooms at The Marmara Park Avenue, plus its lobby, penthouse, basement pool, and all the rest – began with a stroke of graphite.
“It was a pencil, then magic marker and painting,” says Joe Ginsberg, whose artisan-packed studio is charged with designing everything in this boutique hotel on 32nd Street between Park and Lex.
“This is about the sensibility of the hand, in functionality and usability, so that we feel that it’s hand-made,” he says.
They’re currently making the drapes, quilting the leather, casting the bronze, and shaping the glass in a tactile way. They’re inserting bronze segments into the floor, and pouring concrete around them for a terrazzo effect. And they’re designing beds and seating for each guest room, along with a lobby ceiling of reclaimed, whitewashed oak.
The entry to that lobby is an inspired jewel box made of faceted glass panels, a blackened steel frame and a paved walkway. It’s designed to blur the lines between indoors and out.
“So there’s luxe and glam going on but it’s also rustic,” he says. “It complements – it’s all in how you put it together.”
He plans to coat the walls with seamless limestone – not block, but an application of a proprietary material he’s developed over the years – using five to seven applications of slurry mixes.
All the art that will hang on those walls is of his own making, selected for each space according to its needs. The idea is to redefine the metropolitan feel of the city – in the personal vernacular of one of New York’s more gifted designers.
“The challenge is how to bring various sensibilities to it so it feels good,” he says. “It’s about knowing your stuff – I live it and breathe it, so it’s a canvas to me.”
And he’s currently drawing and painting on it every single day.
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