“This graciously scaled dining room in Greenwich Village had everything one might want in a proper dining room-but no window. That limitation became the germ of an idea. We commissioned artist Kevin Paulsen to paint a fantastical all -encompassing landscape mural where history meets contemporary imagination. The result is a room that offers more of a view than a mere window could ever provide.”
by Fred A. Bernstein
Photography by Peter Murdock
JUNE 12, 2022
It takes GLENN GISSLER almost two hours to drive from his apartment in Brooklyn Heights to his weekend house in northwestern Connecticut. So, he might envy his clients — an investment banker, his wife and their young daughter — who live in a Lower Manhattan loft. Getting to their weekend house, in Nyack, New York, takes all of 45 minutes. And that includes crossing the Hudson River, which the city apartment and the country house overlook from opposite sides.
Nine years ago, when they bought the Manhattan apartment, the couple hired Gissler to design its interiors, a job that included helping them assemble a collection of ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST ART. Then, three years ago, when they started looking for a weekend house, they turned to Gissler for advice. After a few false starts, the couple found a newly constructed COLONIAL REVIVAL/shingle-style home that fronts the river at its widest point. Architect David Neff had given the 5,200-square-foot home traditional details while keeping the interiors open and light.
“The rooms are well proportioned, not too grandiose,” Gissler says. And the setting couldn’t be better. The house, he says, is set high enough to offer spectacular Hudson River views and low enough to feel close to the water.
The couple bought it, and Gissler proceeded to outfit the interiors with a smart mix of new and old furniture, much of it European. “The house is very much American, but it’s not AMERICANA,” says the designer, who studied architecture and fine arts at the Rhode Island School of Design, then worked for an architect (Rafael Viñoly) and an interior designer (JUAN MONTOYA) before founding his own practice, in 1987.
Here, Gissler leads Introspective on a tour of the house, on which he collaborated with his senior designer, Craig Strulovitz, also a RISD graduate.
by Glenn Gissler
Photography by Joshua McHugh
Joe D’Urso — a pioneer of forward-looking, minimalist modernism — designed the apartment of Bruce and Arlene Simon on New York’s Upper West Side more than 40 years ago. Thanks to the Simons’ careful upkeep — she’s a well-known preservation advocate — it remains a study in sleek black, white and gray. Top: For the dining room, D’Urso created a modular table system (one leaf hangs from the wall when not in use, looking like an Ad Reinhardt painting deployed as bulletin board), and he added chairs in the style of Marcel Breuer’s 1920s Cesca design.
Even in the analog days of the 1970s, word traveled fast about a certain emerging and remarkably talented interiors star. His name was Joe D’Urso, and he was shaking up the design world.
I still remember the first time I saw his work, just after I graduated from high school and 10 years before I would start a design practice of my own. It was in Architectural Digest’s November/December 1976 issue, which featured a New York City home D’Urso had reinvented as an exemplar of High Tech design, the extreme minimalist–modernindustrial style that had become his signature. The Upper West Side apartment was unlike anything I had ever seen or imagined.
The space, located at the top of a West 67th Street Gothic-revival
His design for the home’s soaring main space, a double-height living room overlooked by a balcony originally intended to accommodate musical performances, felt radically new.
He furnished the space sparsely, with a few blocky, rolling black-Formica coffee tables and a couple of low-slung woven chairs set on a high carpeted platform. That plinth was one of several he created to break up and define various sections of the room, using one as a sofa, another as a daybed, and one even as a table. To help balance out the cavernous volume, D’Urso suspended a large split-leaf philodendron on wires from the ceiling, and Arlene added black canvas pillows to the extended built-in sofa, with more on the daybed near the fireplace.
by Lisa Zieger
Decorative arts historian Lisa Zeiger wrote an interesting article entitled VOTIVE OFFERINGS: GLENN GISSLER AT RISD about my relationship with my alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design, and more specifically with the RISD Museum, on her blog BOOK AND ROOM.
As a RISD alum, former board member, and devoted museum donor, it’s been my goal to help give students and visitors the opportunity to experience and draw inspiration from the museum’s collection. Lisa’s post chronicles my decades-long quest to donate notable fine art, industrial design and decorative objects to the RISD Museum, with a personal goal of bequeathing 1000 objects in total. You can read the post by following this link.
I lived with many of these items in my NYC apartment before they found a new home at the RISD Museum, including a partners desk with two chairs by Donald Judd, and works on paper by Kiki Smith, Sol Lewitt, Leon Golub, and Vija Celmins. I also have passed along objects by the 19th century industrial designer Christopher Dresser, and 20th century objects by Josef Hoffmann, Ettore Sottsass, Joe Columbo and Russel Wright.
You’ll find just a selection of my notable donations to the museum below, and if you’re so inclined, you can follow this link to the museum’s website, which shows many more with descriptions and details.
This essay is about a plentiful cache of the most rarefied—and sometimes recondite—decorative art objects produced in the last two centuries contained in architect-designer Glenn Gissler’s applied arts trove. Since 1984, Glenn has been gifting these objets to the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art in an effort to augment the RISD Museum’s modern design collection. Glenn himself holds degrees in both Fine Art and Architecture from RISD, and the 200 or so smaller objects he has donated to the RISD Museum reflect an architect’s discipline; a connoisseur’s delectation.
by Carl Dellatore
Photography by Gross & Daley
Growing up with an interest in all things creative, Craig Strulovitz started watercolor-painting classes at age five. Throughout his childhood, he spent as much time as possible studying the arts: drawing, painting, photography, ceramics, and all things visual.
Strulovitz always had a fascination with rooms; one of his favorite places to visit as a child was his grandfather’s home office. He was a custom-home builder, and Strulovitz would spend hours flipping through floor plans, trying to visualize the spaces and designing the “perfect” house in his head.
After earning an undergraduate degree in interior architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, Strulovitz settled in New York City, where he found a position at Glenn Gissler Design. He honed his skills under Gissler’s mentorship; thirteen years later he holds the position of senior designer at the firm.
Upon entering this apartment, you first see a bold composition featuring Theodoros Stamos’s 1946 painting The Sacrifice above a circa-1830 Chinese altar table. The pair of upholstered stools are covered in a soft green fabric to complement the palette in the adjacent rooms. The composition Is completed by a curated arrangement of objects, Including a rustre African sculpture and a Tiffany Studios candlestick.
FROM: West Milford, New Jersey
LOCATED IN: New York, New York
INFLUENCES: The pioneering early twentieth-century modern designers and architects, such as Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, and Carlo Scarpa. These innovators moved away from decoration and ornamentation to focus more on proportion, superb natural materials, patterns, and textures.
THE LOOK: Modern interiors inspired by historical design movements.
COLOR: I prefer colors from nature–the bright green of new-growth leaves in the spring or the deep blues of the ocean on a clear day.
KEY ELEMENT: A well-designed room starts with having a great furniture plan. When beginning the design process, think about the function of each space and develop a layout incorporating all of those functions.
ALWAYS HAVE: A well-considered seating arrangement that feels inviting for one person, but can easily accommodate large groups. Get the best-quality, most comfortable sofa your budget will allow. Then incorporate smaller chairs and ottomans that can be easily moved around for a variety of different-size groups.
INSPIRATION: I often find inspiration in the composition of extraordinary artwork. In interior design, like any visual art, you need to pay attention to shape and proportion, balance, and harmony among the elements. There must be exciting elements that pull your focus but also negative space for your eyes to rest on.
NEVER FORGET: Storage. If you have thirty pairs of shoes or five hundred books, you should know where they are going to go. When everything has its place, your design will feel resolved and successful.
Opposite: The open-plan dining area has a large mirror to further expand the feeling of space. Above the dining table hangs an organic Lindsey Adelman Branching Bubble chandelier to contrast with the square-edged furniture in dark-stained walnut.
Above: The large and vibrant painting by Larry Poons above the custom sofa adds an element of surprise to the room’s neutral palette. The sofa is flanked by a pair of 1950s Italian lamps with an ombré glaze.
Right: To create a distinction between spaces. the family room was painted a soft green, complementing the background color of prints by Jo Baer on the walls. A white Nelson Saucer pendant adds a rich luminosity to the space.