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"Standing in stocking feet in her cozy Manhattan apartment, Alessandra Branca tips a tomato-red Chinese teapot over cups as thin as eggshells, pouring out steaming Earl Grey along with her design philosophy. &amp;quot;Objects shouldn&amp;#039;t be an affectation,&amp;quot; says the decorator. &amp;quot;They should be in a room because you take pleasure each time you use them. A great lamp makes switching it on a richer experience. If you don&amp;#039;t love your things, it&amp;#039;s much better to live in a white box.&amp;quot; This sensible nugget of wisdom is textbook Branca, and she has liberally applied it in her homes. Each is suffused with her passion for architecture; the color red; antiques with personality; and smart stripes layered on classic patterns. For her, white-box rooms are just not in the cards. In Chicago, Branca and her husband of nearly 30 years, Stephen Uihlein, share a stately limestone townhouse (celebrated classical architect David Adler once lived in it) where they raised three children. The Windy City is also where her design business is based and where a year ago this month she relocated Branca, a boutique in which refined antiques mingle with her accessories, textiles, lighting, and furnishings, to a dramatic new space. In Rome, the decorator&amp;#039;s birthplace, the couple keeps a four-bedroom flat in a 16th-century former rectory. &amp;quot;Not a thing has changed on my block since Raphael and Michelangelo walked there,&amp;quot; Branca proudly states. The foothold in New York City is the decorator&amp;#039;s latest residence. At 1,100 square feet, the one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a 1926 Georgian-style townhouse is by far Branca&amp;#039;s smallest perch, but she&amp;#039;s given the Upper East Side spot a big, comfortable spirit. The living room has Regency spoon-back chairs on casters, an inviting damask banquette, and a sleeper sofa and settee used for dining, reading, and guest accommodations. &amp;quot;You should always figure out the way you want a room to feel,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I wanted this one to incite calmness but also excitement.&amp;quot; The apartment formerly served as the home and showroom of tastemaking antiques dealer R. Louis Bofferding, and &amp;quot;it has Directoire-inspired woodwork, so there is a certain tone to live up to,&amp;quot; she continues. &amp;quot;I like the practical next to the elegant and the charge of red and black against the beige. Black gives rooms depth, and a shot of red is the kick you need in life.&amp;quot; From painted Italian armchairs covered in Fortuny fabric to the chic sleeper sofa Branca designed and upholstered in pale-gold velvet, the furnishings are opulent but somehow simple and timeless. And inventive too. A pair of lamps was born out of Branca&amp;#039;s recycling of 18th-century Italian columns. &amp;quot;They must have been part of the architecture of a church,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I found some old ruined paisley and made lampshades for them. When I grew up in Rome, if you didn&amp;#039;t find what you needed, you had it made.&amp;quot; In the apartment&amp;#039;s only other sizable room, almost anyone else would have set up the bedroom and called it a day. But not Branca. &amp;quot;My husband and I are big readers, and so I made it into what I needed: a library. I can meet in here with clients or finish projects.&amp;quot; Its doors are clad in old-school tartan trimmed with brass nailheads. On top of an antique trestle table, an eccentric bronze-and-glass lamp in the shape of a jellyfish seems to swim next to a standard-issue computer monitor; it&amp;#039;s a typical Branca marriage of opposites. Swing-arm lamps with paprika-color shades flank the blue corduroy banquette. Sometimes she reads there, and at other times she pulls up a table to eat (there is no formal dining area). Floor-to-ceiling shelves display exotic eggs and insects, evidence of a love of the natural world sparked by the decorator&amp;#039;s mother, a painter fascinated with everything from butterflies to black holes.  In the narrow space that had been a dressing area, Branca has created a bedroom as snug as a Pullman car. &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t need much room to sleep,&amp;quot; she observes of the small chamber, whose walls are lined with striped red linen. The lampshades here, on the other hand, are coral, the decorator carefully points out: Like the proverbial Eskimo talking about snow, Branca has dozens of words for red. The icing on this Upper East Side cake is the garden. &amp;quot;I brought in 80 bags of gravel and added a lattice fence,&amp;quot; Branca recalls. &amp;quot;The more limited the space, the more character you have to give it.&amp;quot; Bamboo chairs and a folding table she covers with a flowery length of linen-cotton for dinners and drinks are stored in a small shed. The first time one of her sons visited, he bought a Weber grill and had a cookout for his friends. &amp;quot;When you bring children into a place, they immediately make it real,&amp;quot; Branca says, laughing. &amp;quot;Their stuff is around! Their music is on!&amp;quot; That no-nonsense acknowledgment of real life reflects what Branca calls her Virgo need to fuse practicality and beauty. When a home is intentionally lovely, the decorator says, people sometimes assume it lacks character. &amp;quot;They do this with beautiful people too,&amp;quot; Branca adds. &amp;quot;But you can live with beauty and not have a vacuous environment\u2014this apartment is not a dumb blonde.&amp;quot; Click here to view the resources. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/house-interiors/a3904/the-perfect-pied-a-terre-a-56076/>