What are bathrooms for?
An insider-outsider perspective on bathroom design in a New York City apartment.
By Prakhar Sharma
Every New York City apartment has a story to tell, but that story is invariably a portrayal of its living room. It usually centers on socializing in the more public and performative spaces of the apartment. Unlike living rooms, a bathroom is typically the utilitarian space in an apartment. While the living room seeks grandeur and aspires to make that first and lasting impression on its audience, bathrooms are usually confined to the absolute necessary, devoid of any story or representation. The surging demand for austerity and asceticism in apartment renovations around the city also relegates bathrooms to the bare minimum, saving indulgent flourishes for the more exposed areas of the apartment such as the living room and kitchen.
A cursory look at New York City apartment listings online would reveal the degree of similarity among the different bathrooms and the near absence of ambition in lending them character and personality. Grandeur in a New York City bathroom rarely goes beyond size and basic infrastructure. It is almost as if its individuality did not matter, that it did not even aspire to talk beyond its functional merits. The idea of a bathroom has been stale for too long.
But can a bathroom become more than simply a functional space in a New York City apartment? Can it also tell a story that inspires and captures the imagination of its audience? This question long inspired the curiosity of my partner, an architect and designer running her own practice, Nour Jallad Architecture PLLC (NjAD).
Beyond the array of beautiful lines that render order to a drawing, and the ethereal relationship between those lines, the space, and the volume, a bathroom should reflect the sensuality and sensibilities of its inhabitants. To alchemize this ambition into the design of the bathrooms, and to bring bathrooms back into the conversation on the story of an apartment, NjAD recently completed a gut renovation of three bathrooms in an Upper West Side pre-war condominium.
The ambition entailed elevating the typical residential bath experience from the functional to the transcendental. Inspired by travel experiences around the world and an unceasing love for design that is both pragmatic and enchanting, NjAD sought to create three separate bathroom moments that were distinctively different, mutually exclusive, yet complementary. The intent was to create not just beautiful bathrooms, but also arresting experiences. A different passion and curiosity manifests itself in each bathroom, with a unifying theme: the role of natural elements in generating a spa-like experience marked by an indulging, serene, and calming mood.
The primary bathroom evokes the aesthetic of Zumthor’s Thermal Baths. It serves as a testament to the power of raw materials and exquisite design in shaping a space. It utilizes natural materials in a way that makes the entire bathroom feel enveloped by stone. Grey terrazzo – a composite of white marble chips cast into a concrete material with a honed finish – meticulously covers the floor and walls in a seamless manner. It gives the appearance of a space made of stone; a space carved into the stone.
As the water, both fleeting and stationary, touches the walls, it leaves its temporary imprint on the terrazzo and accentuates the ritual of bathing. The heated floor that follows the bathing experience mimics the feel of a hot marble surface in a Turkish Hammam. Indirect lighting in the coved ceiling, combined with minimal recessed downlights, is a nod to domed bath ceilings and complements the natural daylight from the window. Brass elements punctuating the terrazzo add an element of warmth and render luxurious grammar to the serene language of this bath.
The powder room is the pièce de résistance in the apartment. With metal mesh drapery concealing an oversized soaking tub, the space serves as a haven for relaxation as well as an occasional powder room for guests.
The design gives the appearance of an outsized jewelry box, except that the spectator can step inside the box and effortlessly collapse the distance that separates art, the artist, and the audience. It is a place of perfect darkness, a twilit evocation of a dark theater, with dimly lit openings serenading you to the bright captivating drama soundlessly unfolding behind the opulent splendor of the curtains.
The space poetically captures the essence of contradictions: hard cold tiles juxtaposing the soft warm wood; a stark soaking tub enveloped by a dark honed mosaic surface; and black flooring complementing a white ceiling. With its charred oiled wood panels, copper fixtures, a copper mesh curtain, and a white Corian bathtub, the bathroom celebrates the marriage between light, color, and space. It emblematically blends the adjectival with the visceral.
The secondary bathroom is liberatingly bright and airy, conjuring moods that occasion a cherished respite from the rush hours of a busy metropolis. It is a worn groove of a calming routine, a place to embark on self-indulgent leisure. In an oblique way, it offers a searing betrayal of the stilted metaphysics of contemporary life.
The crowning glory of the space is the cream-colored fluted terrazzo paneling that lines the interior of the shower. It symbolizes a seashore landscape with waves upon waves that do not compete with the body, or challenge it, but rather celebrate its presence. The direct lighting in the ceiling mimics sunlight falling on a sandy beach, accentuating the sea glass shell character of the Carrara marble aggregates within the terrazzo tiles. Through its details and color scheme, this bathroom brings the outside in and transports the bather to an oasis within the city.
The three bathrooms represent different interpretations of the bath experience, conceptualized within the constraints of a New York City prewar apartment. Each bathroom uniquely reenacts the art of indulgence with contemplative minimalism, revealing simplest sensations as rediscovered pleasures. In tandem, the three bathrooms enable a prized cohabitation between restful imagination, sensual intimacy, and oneiric fantasies. In doing so, they elevate the status of a New York City bathroom from the functional and necessary to the splendid and transcendental.
