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"View Slideshow\n\nFew interior designers are asked to create an entire apartment in 90 days, and even fewer can do so when asked. John Barman is one of the exceptions.\n\nIn three months the designer transformed a bland two-bedroom white box in Manhattan into a bright, warm residence for ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos and his wife, actress and television personality Ali Wentworth.\n\n\"I thought color was very much John's style,\" says Wentworth, \"and George and I didn't want the apartment to look too corporate.\"\n\nThe couple already owned a 200-year-old brick town house in Washington, D.C., where Stephanopoulos hosts ABC's Sunday morning program This Week and appears as a political analyst on other ABC shows. But when Wentworth was offered a job in Manhattan\u2014cohosting CBS's lifestyle program Living It Up! with Ali Jack\u2014they needed a New York base. \"It took a long time to find the space, so John had to be quick,\" she explains. The couple and their young daughter, Elliot Anastasia, now go back and forth between the two cities.\n\nWentworth knew from the beginning that she wanted to hire Barman. \"I had seen his work and liked it,\" she says. But the clincher was his proximity: The apartment they found is in his building, a midtown tower that won its architects, Polshek Partners, multiple awards from the American Institute of Architects. There is nothing like having your decorator just a few steps away.\n\nSo how did Barman complete the job on schedule? \"I can do things fast if people let me,\" says the designer, a graduate of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. \"A 90-day limit is fine as long as you don't have too much construction\u2014and you have a client who can make decisions.\"\n\nHe did. After discussing style and budget, he got a green light. \"You know what you want to do; go to it,'\" Stephanopoulos recalls telling him. \"The design was his, top to bottom.\"\n\nBarman saved time by retaining the configuration of the rooms in the 2,200-square-foot space, although he did install a herringbone wood floor and add architectural detailing, such as crown moldings and wall paneling.\n\nWentworth, a former star of In Living Color, favors vivid tones, which is evident in the living room chairs upholstered in Herm\u00E9s orange. \"I thought color was very much John's style, and George and I didn't want the apartment to look too corporate,\" Wentworth says. \"I happen to like bold colors,\" Barman elaborates. \"But not everyone is OK with them. A lot of people are scared of color.\"\n\nIn the dining room, Barman painted the paneling orange as a backdrop for a work by Donald Sultan, which he flanked with two pyramid bookcases of his own design. The rest of the furniture is mid-century modern: a 1940s French dining table, a Paul McCobb cabinet, some 1960s bronze-and-cane dining chairs.\n\nTo brighten the master bedroom, Barman added luminous draperies and halogen lighting. Flowers, pictures and glass paperweights sit on the 1970s chrome-and-wood desk. That desk gets a lot of use.\n\n\"In New York we pretty much work and play with our daughter,\" remarks Stephanopoulos, whose name also frequents the society pages along with his wife's. (Wentworth's mother is Mabel \"Muffie\" Brandon Cabot, who served as social secretary to Nancy Reagan in the White House before moving to Boston.)\n\nThe living room plan is open, with two seating groups to accommodate large numbers of guests at cocktail parties. One side is anchored by a custom-made sofa in orange and beige (\"I did have to call in a favor to get that done on time,\" Barman admits). On the other side, four chrome midcentury chairs join a round 1940s French table. Barman's d\u00E9cor blends his clients' interests in midcentury pieces and contemporary art perfectly.\n\nThere's an abstract painting by Esteban Vicente, a Karin Davie work on paper featuring mirrored circles, a photograph of a Berlin building fa\u00E7ade by Frank Thiel, a series of small paintings by Jeffrey Lewis, four silk-screen prints by Nicholas Howey and a mixed-media work by Peter Dayton. The vibrant art gives the apartment its youthful spirit, and the color ties it all together, which is exactly what you would expect for the talented young couple who occupy it. All it takes is 90 days and a designer who's a real pro."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/barman-article-042005>