Sofas on Glass Feet: Inside Julie Hillman's 5,600-Square-Foot Duplex

By Tom Whitfield

Julie Hillman spent a 20-step process on nearly every piece in a 5,600-square-foot Park Avenue duplex — and she says she would do it again. "I really love doing things that I haven't seen before," Hillman told AD. "Everything was like a 20-step process. At one point we thought, Why couldn't we have made this a little easier? But it was, in the end, really, really worthwhile."

The clients, a New York City couple with three children, gave the AD100 designer broad latitude to reinterpret the apartment's classic layout. "From our initial conversation with Julie, it was clear she heard our goals," one homeowner said. "And she has an extraordinary eye."

Hillman worked with Ferguson & Shamamian Architects on the renovation. Tom McManus, the architect who led the project, described the main intervention: a former laundry room and bathroom became a breakfast corner with a resized window. "We really tried to open up that back space and get more light in," McManus said. "That was really important to the client, who wanted the apartment to feel more fresh."

The original floor plan stayed untouched. "It was an excellent layout, very proper, with the bedrooms upstairs and a living room, dining room, and library downstairs, each with a fireplace," Hillman said.

Who made what?

The project's roster of artisans reads like a roll call of specialist workshops:

• Neil Wainland fabricated the custom metal-and-glass front door, inspired by sliding doors Hillman saw at Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan. The geometric piece had to pass light and meet strict safety requirements.
• Anne Corbiere, a textile artist based in Anjou, wove silvery-bronze metallic thread into wall panels for the library and embroidered cashmere for the primary dressing room's closet doors, each slightly different from the next.
• Mauro Mori, an Italian artisan, built two dining tables on robust sculptural pedestals. Hidden casters let the tables push together or separate depending on guest count.
• 6:AM, a Milanese lighting company, supplied an oversized chandelier of clear and matte glass in shades from ochre to smoky gray, nearly spanning the dining room's width.

The living room mixes an André Arbus daybed with glass feet, a vintage Swedish wood-framed sofa, a monumental Ingrid Donat bronze coffee table, and rounder seating arranged around a mirrored table by Sam Orlando Miller. A 1940s pedestal table by German sculptor Siegfried Pütz sits beneath the gallery's curved staircase. The powder room pairs textured black walls, an ebony marble sink and gilded sconces by Hervé Van Der Straeten.

Hillman's stated logic for the varied seating: "For me, it's about having a room where 20 people could sit in, or two people could sit in."

What does this change for high-end residential design?

Not much, on the evidence here — and that is the point. Hillman avoided structural reinvention and put the budget into bespoke fabrication instead, from embroidered closet doors to casters under dining tables. "I work with these artisans that have a point of view," she said. "It's really a collaboration."

What the account leaves unsaid: costs, timelines and how many of the 20 steps failed before they succeeded. What it does establish is that clients at this level are buying access to named makers, not just square footage. Expect more architects to present artisan rosters alongside floor plans.