Sometimes the American dream isn’t a house with a picket fence; it’s an apartment—brand-new, equipped with spectacular views, and, best of all, fully staffed. “They were getting tired of running a house,” interior designer Harry Heissmann says of longtime repeat clients—five residences and counting—who wanted a Florida getaway that demanded less work. “It was beautiful, but it required a lot of attention. They had the most beautiful orchids on their trees, but they had to be maintained all the time. Palm fronds were always falling into the pool and having to be fished out. They really couldn’t just relax.” Then what presented itself to everyone’s wondering eyes was the Bristol, a shapely, shimmering glass condominium tower that rises above the Intracoastal Waterway like a modernist totem. “Most of those skyscrapery things are nondescript, but this one looks like an ocean liner,” the designer says of the 25-story building, which was designed by Chicago-based architects Solomon Cordwell Buenz and has become Palm Beach’s address du jour.
Luckily, the Bristol was still being built out, so Heissman and his clients could examine the model apartment and ponder a variety of standard options in terms of materials and finishes. Some, like the flooring, were no longer available, so Heissmann located a source for terrazzo tiles in a nougat tone that stretches throughout most of the apartment, from the entrance hall and into the master bedroom. (The guest rooms are paved with pale wood.) “You can do proper terrazzo, but it costs a gazillion dollars and takes a long time; we were trying not to break the bank. The tiles are really big, so they give a seamless look.” In addition, the designer adds, “We also had the opportunity to relocate the electrical outlets and ceiling fixture positions, which is what you should always do when revising a floor plan.”
The dining area features a Peter Beard photograph and a bar in the shape of a giraffe.
Canopies and a cheetah-print wall covering by Aimée Wilder bring whimsy to a guest bedroom.
The project was not entirely a tabula rasa, because many of the furnishings from the clients’ Palm Beach house were being considered for reuse. “There was a pretty big list of items that they wanted to bring over but we ended up using much less than we originally thought,” Heissmann says. Which was for the best, given that the high-floor panorama—a cinematic sweep that takes in the Intracoastal Waterway, Palm Beach Island, and the Atlantic Ocean—is so prominent in the apartment’s character and experience.
“The views are so great, you don’t want to be limited to sofas and chairs that force you to look in one direction,” the designer says. “Everything had to be very organic and moving.” It’s a leitmotif that is perceived the moment that the elevator doors open to the entrance hall. “The clients had a huge photograph of a swamp, and they wanted to hang it in the hall,” Heissmann recalls. “I said, Why not have somebody paint the whole space with a fantasy underwater swamp scene? It’s a pretty swamp, not a sad swamp—with hermit crabs, fish, little snails, and seaweed floating everything.” This segues into a corridor where the walls and ceiling are clad in a swirling, iridescent wallcovering—here pearly, there dark—that Heissman compares to puddles slicked with oil or gasoline.
Curvaceous de Sede sofas, clad in buttery gray leather, anchor the living room like an archipelago. Ingeniously designed, each is equipped with segmented backs that can be pushed and pulled into various combinations thanks to integral tracks. “The backs twirl all around, and you can make nooks, et cetera,” Heissman explains. Nearby is a streamlined contemporary version of the classic borne settee—a round sofa with four separate seats, it was a favorite during Napoléon III’s Second Empire—that is mounted on a pivot so that it turns 360 degrees. “The client’s grandkids play carousel all the time.” Even the room’s stationary furnishings give the appearance of movement. Striking bronze occasional tables, a limited-edition design by Blackman Cruz, appear to be slowly dripping from midair to the floor, and the free-form carpet features a sinuous kinetic pattern mirroring the ocean waters that ebb and flow in the surrounding seascape.
Beata Heuman’s Dodo Egg pendant is suspended in the kitchen.
The dining table from the clients’ former house made its way to the apartment, its smoked-glass surface now offset by lean vintage Lucite chairs (found on 1stdibs) that Heissmann reupholstered with a mottled bronze-tone fabric. For the space, Heissman created a wall-mounted credenza with a corrugated sea green exterior. He also brought in a towering wicker giraffe as a whimsical accent piece; its back opens to reveal a bar. There’s already a drinks station elsewhere, but, Heissmann says with a smile, “it’s always good to have more than one bar.”
As for the bedrooms, patterns set the tone: bold in scale, polychrome in palette, and fantastical in motif, such as the Fornasetti for Cole & Son school-of-fish wall covering that encircles the husband’s study. The master bedroom sports a dense, exaggerated leaf print that also upholsters the bed and curtains the windows; Heissmann complemented it with 1960s pineapple lamps with patinated metal shades. One spare room seems to be tiled completely with metallic Moroccan zellige, while another—used by the grandchildren—is clad with a spotted yellow-and-black pattern by Aimée Wilder that conceals images of cheetahs. Even the ceiling is covered with it. “When rooms have no architectural interest, I like to use one pattern to enliven every surface,” Heissmann says. “That way, when you lay in bed, you can look at the ceiling and not just see a field of boring white.” He also topped the room’s twin beds with graphic canopies that are attached to the ceiling, a trick that not only exaggerates the height of the room but also provides a double dose of fun.
“Someone said to me, 'Oh, this is such a surrealistic apartment, like a modern day Dalí, and that was really great to hear,” Heissmann says. “Everywhere you look there’s something that moves or has a personality or does something funny or is unexpected or unusual. It’s kooky, but the clients really appreciate the odd.”
