Alfredo Paredes Studio Replenishes a Storied New York City Penthouse
From the street, the interior design studio’s office looks like a Greco-Roman temple perched atop a late-19th-century building in NoMad; inside, it’s a warm representation of the designer’s signature style—punctuated by unexpected colors.
Strolling along a strip of Broadway set between the new institutions of the NoMad neighborhood—The Ned, The Ritz, the Ace—one would only catch sight of the penthouse office of Alfredo Paredes Studio if they were really looking for it. A sight to behold, the structure looks as if a Greco-Roman temple were set atop architect Alfred Zucker’s historic Baudouine Building. To step inside, however, is to realize how necessary stewards are for such storied New York City spaces. The studio has called the location home for less than six months, but has already embraced the preexisting eccentricities, and layered in warmth and sophistication.
Prior to the move, Paredes worked from a West Chelsea office ideal for an individual establishing his own artistic vision after more than three decades spent at Ralph Lauren, where he served as executive vice president and chief creative officer. The temple penthouse was a serendipitous discovery. Long the home of Cuban-American fashion designer Isabel Toledo and her husband Ruben, an artist and her collaborator, the most recent occupants were in the film industry. Outside, he tells Surface, reminded him of Old New York. “Then I walked into the space and said ‘this is it.’ I said ‘I want this space.’ The sun was setting, light was everywhere,” he shares. According to lore, Basquiat’s assistant added the stucco. Creativity infused its walls—and even the floors of the turquoise blue kitchen.
Though he set his team closer to the towering, angled wall of windows—with an uninterrupted view of the Empire State Building—Paredes took the orange carpeted corner suite for himself. It was a surprise. “I am a non-color guy,” he says. “If you go to my house, there’s no color. It’s the most serene of all experiences, when it’s neutral. But the room was beautiful. It sort of didn’t need anything.”
He notes that the previous tenants put in the vibrant orange carpet and the glass windows between the interior rooms. “The ease of my style is that I don’t overthink it. I don’t get overwrought,” he says. Rather, he placed items from his own furniture collection alongside found pieces.
“I had a desk like that, a saw horse desk, and everyone wanted it,” he says of his oak and glass craftsman’s worktable, named the Paloma Desk. “When I started my own collection, I knew I’d make a sawhorse desk.” Opposite it, Paredes placed his wood grain-finished, cast resin Savanna Drinks Table—and beside that, a vintage sofa he found in Hudson, New York. On his wall hangs a painting he bought in London about 30 years ago.
His process doesn’t differ between residential clients, retail spaces, or hospitality endeavors like Gabe Stulman and April Bloomfield’s acclaimed Fort Greene restaurant, Sailor. “If I walk into a space I have a gut feeling. It takes me a minute to peel apart the onion to figure out what that is,” he says. With clients, it’s also dialogue-driven. He adds, “I try not to hold back too much when clients push me out of my comfort zone because that’s where creativity lives: at the edge.”
Paredes has a signature style. Though each room he designs tends to be timeless, nostalgia informs what he does, as well as the desire to bridge an emotional connection. “I have a very distinct understanding of what pleases me,” he says. “Working for Ralph and for our clients, it’s about dissecting and deciphering the vision that they’re talking about—and maybe distilling it into my perception of the best possible options.”
Two additional pops of color lend further dimension to the space. First, his pink Margot Sofa integrates seamlessly into a scene alive with plants, including a towering cactus that is rumored to have been in the penthouse for 75 years. Second is a tiny green room, which Paredes furnished with an old Jacobsen chair. “Part of my Cuban upbringing is color. I’m not afraid of color. It has to be in the right place at the right time,” he says.
“When I was at Ralph, it was always about bringing his direction to life or the dream he wanted to project. That really helped me train myself to do what I do now,” he says. “In that context, because of all those years doing that, I’ve been able to identify what works for me—and what is me.” This extends to his furniture line, for which he used his former East Village apartment as a north star. If it could integrate there, he would develop it for his collection.
This March, Pardes will release his debut book—Alfredo Paredes at Home— with Rizzoli. It’s an immersion into his personal style through the lens of the places he and his family have lived over the last few years. “I felt like I was a machine of hyper-creativity at Ralph Lauren for 34 years,” he says. “With this book, there’s a bit of stepping out and telling my own story.”