“Our client is an international businessman based out of Barcelona who travels all over the globe for both work and outdoor adventure,” designer Emilie Munroe of Studio Munroe says. “He is brilliant, very athletic and engaged with communities throughout the world.”

The client owned a condo in the SoMa neighborhood and another unit in the building went on the market. He knew the location and amenities were a fit, and was enticed that the new condo would be on an upper level, offering a higher vantage point of the city’s iconic skyline.

For this project, Emilie says that nailing the color story of the apartment would be key. “We wanted to achieve a masculine, serene, and comfortable look while maintaining a modern, curated perspective,” she shares. They took cues from modern European architecture, and extrapolated the coloration of stonework often found in Andorran homes, to curate a color and textural scheme that would evoke both the client’s hometown as well as his urban professional experience. 

In the living and dining area, the views are clearly the star. Emilie and her team’s goal was to meld the ivory, grey, blue, and taupe of the skyline with pops of saturated jewel tones so that the interiors both blended with, and popped against, the city beyond. Here, they spent hours perfecting the scale of the custom-designed charcoal and ivory cut pile wool area rug. “We took the two highest contrast colors in the skyline and twisted them into a geometric linear pattern that almost filled the entire floor of the great room,” she explains. “It’s bold and angular while still being cozy and a unifier of the colors in the view beyond.”

This balance also shines bright in the master bedroom, where a deep teal midnight blue brings a a calm strength to the cozy neutral upholstery. “The jewel in this room is the lacquered emerald console that provides much needed storage along with an unexpected sheen and hue,” Emilie says.

The project was completed within the same year that the design project began, but the geographic realities of an international client meant that installation week involved iPhone videos and panoramic photos. “We were delighted to have access to technology to bridge the gap and share in the excitement of the big reveal,” Emilie concludes with a smile.