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"Juan Carlos Garcia-Lavin swears he would love to be a minimalist and live in rooms as sparely furnished as an art gallery. Actually, for about a decade, the Havana-born, Miami-bred, and Manhattan-based interior and still-life stylist did just that. He owned a studio in a prewar apartment house near the historic Flatiron Building with stark white walls and lean furniture so unforgiving his friends complained. Then he joined romantic forces with George Fesser, a social worker and immigration-rights activist who likes to entertain. Under that softening influence, Garcia-Lavin began to understand that a cozy home can still have modern integrity. &amp;quot;Now I have furniture with cushions,&amp;quot; says the stylist, known as JC, with a laugh.  He also has more space. When Garcia-Lavin learned the studio next door to his was for sale, he purchased it and combined the units into a one-bedroom, two-bath wonder that feels far more spacious than its nearly 1,000 square feet.  White walls go a long way in encouraging an expansive atmosphere. &amp;quot;I have a problem with colored walls because I own so much art and like it to pop,&amp;quot; Garcia-Lavin says. Also in the apartment&amp;#039;s space-enhancing favor are tall windows that welcome sunlight for most of each day. But a closer look at what Garcia-Lavin has wrought reveals a bevy of intelligent tricks. One of his looking-large solutions is fool-the-eye furniture placement: &amp;quot;No piece is backed up against a wall, except the bed.&amp;quot; In the living area, two dark sofas and a pair of benches turned cocktail tables are pulled into the center of the ebony-stained floor, allowing visitors to wander freely around the perimeter. He also increased the height of the doorways, which now reach to the ceiling.  Given Garcia-Lavin&amp;#039;s aspirations to minimalism, he has managed to amass a surprisingly impressive haul of flea-market paintings, chemical beakers, and 20th-century medical lithographs exploring the inner workings of the human body. &amp;quot;My mother worked in a pharmacy, and I was always fascinated by anything medical,&amp;quot; Garcia-Lavin explains. But his styling techniques have managed to make even that considerable cache seem orderly and restrained. And at one end of the living area, Garcia-Lavin has hung around 30 paintings in a jigsaw-puzzle formation that stretches from wall to wall. &amp;quot;Unifying things in one place makes them look like a single unit,&amp;quot; he says of the arrangement, which at first appears to be one immense work of art. &amp;quot;That way I can get away with owning a million things.&amp;quot;  Click here to see the resources. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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