This Playful Apartment is Full of Happy Designs
Enter Zoe Cohen’s Brooklyn apartment, and you’ll find a curated collection of midcentury classics blended with contemporary quirk. After living in a Chinatown apartment with three roommates, the born-and-bred New Yorker needed space to breathe and—like most Manhattanites looking for more square footage—decamped to Brooklyn. Zoe’s new home in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood, which she has shared with her boyfriend Levi Shaw-Faber for the past year, gives her room to experiment with her own interior style in a way she wasn’t able to before. The result is a decidedly “not boring” mix of new and old, calm and fun.
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Zoe’s entire apartment plays with curves and lines, from the vintage modular sofa and Cold Picnic rug from their “crop circles” collection, to the Calder-inspired hanging mobile.
A 1980s vintage mirrored dresser from Dream Fishing Tackle acts as a credenza in the living room, adorned with a globe lamp from Bi-Rite Studio. Samsung’s Frame television doubles as a statement artwork above.
Zoe, who spent five years running social media and influencer marketing at Marc Jacobs, now heads brand marketing for the ultra-cool underwear brand Parade, which is known for its brightly colored, sustainable fabrics. “I have super loud and colorful taste when it comes to fashion,” says Zoe, “so I intentionally wanted my home to feel a bit more calm and peaceful, with colorful elements.”
Black Eames DCM or “potato chip” chairs flank a Wiggle Room dining table in strawberry. A Noguchi-style pendant hangs above the table. Zoe kept the walls white and bright, allowing the furniture to take center stage.
Levi, a master’s candidate at the Yale School of Architecture, introduced Zoe to midcentury and Scandinavian design, both of which she says blend well with her love of eclectic vintage. While the couple’s home includes quirky pieces throughout—like the face vessels she picked up at Coming Soon—Zoe thinks the living room is “the vibiest.” Indeed, it’s a room filled with storied pieces.
Zoe purchased peel-and-stick vinyl tiles and laid them out in a checkerboard pattern for a more classic look in the rental kitchen. A Yamazaki storage tower displays colorful essentials like Hay plates and a Great Jones Dutch oven.
A curved corner shelf is home to a pink Foam Lamp by Joseph Algieri, which Zoe bought from Fredericks and Mae, her brother’s design studio in Brooklyn.
Take the sofa, which Zoe discovered at New Jersey–based vintage shop Tri-State Modern. The modular sectional wouldn’t fit in the couple’s small car, so they made multiple trips back and forth from Brooklyn. “When we finally carried the many pieces up the stairs, we put [them] in our living room, feeling especially pleased with ourselves, sat down, and immediately fell in between two of the ‘bread’ cushions that separated under us,” Zoe shares with a laugh. They’ve since connected the modular pieces together at the bottom, so sitting on the sofa is no longer hazardous. She adds, “It’s always a journey!”
Every corner of the apartment brims with statement designs. Here, a Caprani floor lamp with a knife-pleat shade sits adjacent to a framed print of Tom Wesselmann’s Foot, a piece the artist created for the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
The living room and dining space each boast prototypes of the couples’ latest joint venture: Wiggle Room. Born out of frustration with shopping for an affordable and interesting dining table for their own apartment, Zoe and Levi launched the furniture company, which offers “wiggly” made-to-order side, coffee, and dining tables. Crafted from Baltic birch with a laminate top in a variety of colorful pastels, Wiggle Room tables are professionally manufactured in Brooklyn, but the first prototype—a dining table with a strawberry pink top—was handmade by Levi in a woodshop. According to Wiggle Room’s website, that first model “took way too long and was a little wobbly, but it looked like nothing we’d seen before.”
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A green tiled console from Ikon København adds a pop of color to the dining room.
Zoe and Levi launched their furniture company Wiggle Room in September, and prototypes from their line of tables are found throughout the home.
In the couple’s living room, you’ll find Wiggle Room side tables in pistachio and lavender, as well as a prototype of a coffee table with a wood top, which is slated for release later this fall. Though Zoe and Levi didn’t expect to be working from home this year, one bright side of quarantine has been the time and focus to launch their new company. And we have to say, the design world is grateful.
The born-and-bred New Yorker has a self-described “loud” taste in fashion. When designing their home, Zoe wanted the space to feel more calm than her closet, with touches of color.
Do It Yourself
Widen your search If you’re on the lookout for a specific vintage piece, Zoe suggests looking into unconventional shipping options so you can search outside of your immediate area. They found their dining chairs from a seller based in New Mexico, and Levi’s mom shipped them to New York via bus.
Fake it till you make it The charming ’50s-style checkerboard floor in Zoe’s kitchen is actually a DIY using vinyl stick-on tiles.
Find space for things you love If she sees something she loves, Zoe’s rule is to buy it and find a place for it in her home. “There have been so many times I’ve bought something for a certain spot and it just didn’t work,” she says. “If you’re collecting things you love, it will find a space.”
Upon a closer look, you’ll find face-adorned vessels throughout the couple’s home. Here, Tak Tak glasses from Fredericks and Mae smile from a shelf in the kitchen.
Shop It Out
Tower 3-tiered storage rack by Yamazaki Home, $160, westelm.com
Face vessel by Degen, $44, comingsoonnewyork.com
Botkyrka wall shelf by IKEA, $35, ikea.com
12-inch vinyl tile by Achim Home Furnishings, $14, amazon.com
A vintage Le Corbusier LC3 from Claude Home and a lavender cube side table from Ikon København make for a perfect vignette.
Via Architectural Digest
