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"ELLE DECOR: What were your goals in renovating this townhouse? CRISTINA AZARIO: We wanted more space and more light\u2014brownstones are notoriously dark because light only comes in from the front and the back. And, of course, we wanted to maximize our in\u00ADvestment, and part of the way to do that was to add square footage. ED: So what was the plan? CA: My husband [Joshua Abram] and I worked with our architect, George Cooper, to extend the back of the existing building and to add two floors to the original three\u2014one for our sons, Max and Harry, and one for a guest room and office for me, as well as a pair of terraces. We also excavated the basement for a laundry room and storage. We expanded from 2,700 square feet to more than 5,000. ED: How did you allow for more light? CA: We kept the street fa\u00E7ade the way we found it, since the home is part of a row of identical houses built together in the 1890s, but the back wall of our home is now glass. We went with a commercial system, which is less expensive than custom, of course, and\u2014because much of it was prefabricated\u2014it was available much more quickly. The entire renovation took only 10 months. ED: How did you decide what architectural details to preserve? CA: That was easy, because this house didn&amp;#039;t have anything left to save. Everything had been stripped away in previous renovations. The building was in pretty bad shape overall, and it only had two small bathrooms, on the second and ground floors. ED: And you opted not to create &amp;quot;period&amp;quot; detailing. CA: I really wanted to integrate both aspects of the house, the tra\u00ADditional brownstone and the contemporary prefab. This was my constant guideline when addressing materials, fittings, color schemes, and furnishings. So the kitchen has stainless steel countertops, but hand-painted wood cabinets. In the master bath, the tub has an old European look, and the fittings are Georgian inspired, but the room has linear, unframed mirrors for contrast. ED: What are some other ways you balanced the old and new? CA: The living room sofa is deeply tufted, which is a traditional upholstery technique. But it is huge, and very modern in scale. It has no arms and it&amp;#039;s upholstered in hemp, a modest, ancient fabric.  Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;Harlem Renaissance.&amp;quot;   ED: Describe your aesthetic. CA: The rough-hewn with the more refined, you might say. The library, for example, has a modern shelving system, so I bought a very rustic Asian cocktail table, and the wood chairs are from Brazil. There is an African cocktail table in the living room as well as a set of 18th-century engravings by William Byrne.  ED: Was the aspect of indoor-outdoor living important to you? CA: Very much so\u2014because you can see outside from almost every room. All of the hues inside have a neutral, natural quality; the color of the master bedroom actually relates to the color of the exterior.  ED: How did you come up with your color scheme? CA: I started with the colors I saw in the aluminum in the curtain wall. I used various shades of those earthy grays, from the lightest to the darkest, like the living room, which goes into grayed browns. That way all the rooms seem of one piece, but each has its own mood. ED: You&amp;#039;ve spent almost your whole career dealing with fabrics\u2014 for Donna Karan, Frette, your own company\u2014and yet no curtains? CA: And you can imagine how hard that was for me! But to hang curtains in the living room, I would have had to cover almost the whole wall, so even if they were open, the curtains would have blocked a third of the light. And then, because I went with white shades, I had to have those in all the rooms, because that&amp;#039;s just who I am.  ED: What are some of the other unifying features of the design? CA: The ceilings are white, and the floors are a very dark shade, to contrast with the light tones in most of the rooms, and because they reminded me of those old apartments in Paris. I could have gone white, too, but then I would have wanted darker walls. To get the color I wanted\u2014basically a black that has been faded by the sun\u2014I had to mix black and dark brown until I got it right. ED: What was the biggest challenge of the project? CA: The openness. No matter what room you&amp;#039;re in, you can see into another space, and I want rooms to feel related. The library ladder in the kitchen isn&amp;#039;t just for cookbooks, it also gives access to storage, and you can see it from upstairs, so it all ties together visually. ED: What do you like best about your home? CA: I love the amount of space, which is such a luxury in New York. In the master bath I finally have room to put everything away in a drawer, and not a drawer under the sink. I even have a makeup table. But more than that, I like that there is enough variety in the rooms that if I feel a need for a change of scenery I don&amp;#039;t even have to leave the house. What the Pros Know \u2022 For wall colors, Cristina Azario likes to work with a broad range of shades in the same family, from light to dark. This makes a home feel unified while allowing each room to have its own mood, she explains: &amp;quot;All of the colors in my home have a neutral, natural quality.&amp;quot;  \u2022 Repeating a decorative detail throughout a house can make for visual interest without overload: Azario used the same tufting on living room and library sofas and on headboards in the master and guest bedrooms. \u2022 Architectural features like bookshelves or cabinets that span a wall from floor to ceiling create a sense of greater room height. Azario used the same visual trick with her kitchen cabinetry, using a library ladder to access cookbooks and storage spaces. Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;Harlem Renaissance.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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