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"View Slideshow\n\n\"It was the smallest project I've done but also one of the most difficult,\" says Jennifer Post, an interior designer in New York who is known for her contemporary, minimalist style. \"A 10,000-square-foot house is easier.\"\n\nShe is describing the complete transformation of a 900-square-foot apartment on lower Park Avenue in Manhattan. \"It was a dark, dingy, dusty one-bedroom in a former residential hotel,\" she recalls. \"I think the previous tenant must have moved in when the building opened in 1924. It was in its original condition.\"\n\nFor her, the job required a total rethinking of the architecture. \"It was a gut job,\" she says. For the owners, it mandated a radical change of lifestyle. The clients, Michael Bruno, a cosmetic and reconstructive dentist, and his wife, Bettye Muller, a designer of ultrachic women's shoes, were ideal. Recently married and living in Bruno's apartment on the Upper East Side, they wanted a new space in a new neighborhood and were clever enough to call Post before they bought it. She was brutally honest when they took her to see the place.\n\nShe told them she would take on the project only if she could tear down walls and transform the four tiny rooms into one well-articulated space. She would have to install new wiring and plumbing and new heating and air-conditioning systems. And she would remove most of the closets. She told them not to hire her unless they could edit their lives. They would have to throw out their furniture, pots and pans, glasses and dishes, knick-knacks\u2014nearly everything except some clothes and books.\n\nIt was a tall order for a dapper dentist and a fashion-conscious footwear designer. But they were ready for a change. \"They said they wanted it very simple at home,\" Post remembers. \"Bettye said, I'm with design and color and form all day long; at home I want nothing.' \" They took a deep breath, bought the apartment and hired her. Then they watched her demolish the place. \"Every molecule was ripped out except the floor,\" Bruno says. \"We even replaced the windows.\"\n\n\"The apartment is one total concept,\" Post explains. \"It was very important for the clients not to feel like they were in a one-bedroom apartment. My objective was to give them five or six different living spaces\u2014for cooking, working, entertainment, eating, reading and sleeping.\"\n\nHer first move was key. She installed two eight-foot-tall glass-panel doors between the living room and the bedroom and inserted a wide, open-air transom in the wall between them. \"I wanted to have two entrances so you'd never feel enclosed,\" she says. \"I also wanted to be sure there would be no dark corners. There's always light coming through the transom and the doors.\"\n\nThis also changes how the couple move through the apartment. \"Everything is on axis; there's a definite articulation of space,\" Post says. \"Michael can go directly from the kitchen to his reading nook, just as Bettye can walk from the living room to the office to the bathroom\u2014without noticing the bed. The rooms are architecturally driven, with straight angles and clean lines.\"\n\nShe removed the wall between the kitchen and the living room. \"They wanted the kitchen closed off, but I persuaded them to open it up,\" she recalls. \"I told them, I'm going to give you a kitchen that doesn't look like a kitchen.' \" She did. It looks more like a white-lacquered cabinet. The ceiling, which accommodates stereo speakers and light fixtures, was dropped to give the kitchen its own identity as a separate space. The gleaming white cupboards have no fussy hardware. The appliances are all tucked under the counters, and the immaculate white countertops are devoid of clutter. It's a study in horizontal planes.\n\n\"They didn't want a kitchen table,\" Post says. \"So, instead of a seven-foot island, I gave them an 11-foot island that can seat six.\" It also became a favorite spot for Bettye to sketch. True to her promise, Post insisted they buy new (white) china and glassware\u2014six of everything, not more, not less.\n\n\"We reconfigured every space,\" she says. \"It's all very taut.\" The master closet is divided into two parts, his and hers, with a partial wall down the center so neither can encroach on the other's side. Both have strictly edited wardrobes: He has only a few perfect suits, ties, shirts and pairs of shoes. (\"Every time I buy something, I throw something out,\" he says. \"It's liberating.\") His wife is a fashion plate but limits herself to a handful of outfits, and only about a dozen pairs of shoes\u2014and this for a famous shoe designer!\n\nThe apartment has little furniture. Post designed the sofas, low table and bedside tables so they appear to hover just off the floor. She designed the cabinetry along the entire window wall in the living room for audiovisual equipment, storage and extra seating. \"I built out the periphery to utilize every bit of space\u2014and to make another place to sit when they entertain,\" she says. The window perch boasts an unobstructed view of the top of the Empire State Building. And the two important artworks are by Ellsworth Kelly and Robert Motherwell.\n\nThroughout the apartment, there are accents of raspberry red: the living room rug, the glass tiles in the bathroom, the pillows. \"There's a very precise punctuation of color, which is why we chose only one,\" Post says. \"Color is used to increase the length of the apartment. You have to go look for it.\"\n\nAnd how do the clients feel about their new place? \"We're happy every day when we come home,\" Michael Bruno says. \"I call Jennifer all the time to tell her that. When the scale, proportion and everything else is right in an apartment, even one this small, it feels fine.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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