Un Plaza Apartment In Manhattan Frames Light, Art, And River Life
Un Plaza Apartment sits high in Manhattan, New York, where Sherman Architects refines a once-compromised residence into a poised, open corner home. The New York studio pares back 1980s clutter to reveal long sightlines, reconnecting rooms to the tower’s mid-century order and the East River beyond. In this apartment, material restraint and precise moves restore calm, clarity, and the views that matter.
Daylight skims across long oak floorboards and runs toward the corner windows. Walls step aside, and the river pulls the eye through the apartment in a single, confident line.
This is a reorganization more than a makeover. An apartment in Manhattan’s UN Plaza tower, reworked by Sherman Architects, foregrounds plan clarity: open axes to the East River, a continuous living, dining, and kitchen sequence, and flexible thresholds that manage privacy without losing ease.
Reveal The Axes
The team strips out dropped ceilings, lighting coves, and angled partitions to release the tower’s original order. A once-sheetrocked window reopens, transforming a home office into the plan’s destination with sweeping water views and a direct line to the horizon. In the foyer, a clean axis now frames the dining-room windows, turning arrival into orientation.
Open The Corner
Living, dining, and kitchen wrap the corner windows for continuous sight and easy flow. The kitchen reads as a calm platform—quartzite countertops and long oak boards keep attention on the panorama. Then a jolt: a tomato-red, dimpled tile wall signals the hub, its glossy surface catching sun as a cantilevered display cabinet nods to mid-century spirit.
Guide With Partition
Where a solid library wall once stalled movement, a freestanding partition now organizes circulation without interrupting glass. Wrapped in recycled leather and capped by a picture rail, it displays art toward the living room while the library side conceals the television within bamboo shelving. The result is an easy drift between rooms, anchored by windows that never blink.
Work, Gather, Dine
A breakfast bar turns the corner, its bamboo top greeting morning light over UN Plaza. On the dining side, ribbed white bamboo clads the peninsula to screen kitchen mess and stash dinner-party gear. The reconnected trio—kitchen, dining, library—supports large gatherings, with the wet bar tucked along the library’s run for service without fuss.
Calibrate Privacy
Low-profile lights and hidden LEDs replace bulky cans, balancing art illumination and ambient glow. Full-height pivot and coplanar sliding doors carve a primary suite from the apartment’s quiet end, yielding dual bathrooms and walk-in closets on demand. Two water-view offices take bold cabinetry colors, yet both stay plugged into the larger plan through controlled openings and shared light.
A small vestibule now shields the powder room and frames an Elaine de Kooning portrait. It’s a crisp pause point, and it steadies the route from public rooms to the private wing.
By day the river reads as a moving backdrop; by night the city flickers in the glass. The plan holds both. With clutter gone and lines restored, the apartment breathes—modern in use, and true to the tower’s mid-century poise.
Photography courtesy of Sherman Architects
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