designwire daily | Gal Nauer and Giorgetti Create Penthouse Apartment at Plaza Hotel

Gal Nauer and Giorgetti Create Penthouse Apartment at Plaza Hotel

by Ian Volner | Friday, August 5, 2011 | 1 Comment

Israeli-born architect Gal Nauer of firm Gal Nauer Architects has completed work on Penthouse 2009, a triplex luxury apartment on the top floor of New York’s famed Plaza Hotel. Decked out in an array of high-end fixtures, details, and other goodies, the design highlights items from the collection of Italian furniture experts Giorgetti, whose longtime president Carlo Giorgetti was on hand for the project’s unveiling last week.

Says Nauer, “It has been a wonderful experience working with the designers at Giorgetti to select furnishings that both complement and help to define the spaces within the Penthouse.”

Among the Giorgetti selections, the bedroom features a Rea bed sandwiched between Roi night tables and a Rea chair, as well as an Ara mirror, framed in burnished pau ferro, hanging over an Eos dressing table. Other designer rarities in the 6,300-square-foot penthouse include Saint-Louis chandeliers, a 14-foot Victor dining room table, and kitchens by Poggenphol.

The apartment itself has an intriguingly checkered recent history as one half of a failed bid by Russian oligarch Andrei Vavilov to acquire two apartments at The Plaza—the other a duplex—in a combined purchase totaling $53 million back in 2009. The deal fell apart amid complaints by the billionaire buyer of unsightly drainage grates and an “attic-like” feel to the rooftop properties that did not live up to expectations. The Plaza ownership, Israel’s El-Ad Group, would seem to have turned to their A&D compatriots to spruce up the apartment for another sales effort.