SEA CHANGE

Trading Manhattan for Brooklyn, designer Robert Stilin soaks up new scenery indoors and out

- SAM COCHRAN

It's the mark of tremendous talent that the first thing you notice upon entering Robert Stilin's new Brooklyn apartment isn't the view. Beyond the enormous windows, a cruise ship may be docking in the nearby terminal, a ferry crisscrossing the water, or a sunset streaking the sky.

"Something's always going on in the harbor," says the AD100 designer, who likens the maritime panorama to an Andreas Gursky photograph. Still, before that vista can rightly command your attention, your eyes will first flitter among the many wonders inside-from the handsome vignettes of vintage and bespoke furnishings that fill every corner of the home to the eclectic artworks that cover the walls in dense, salon-style arrangements. Here are interiors that embrace but do not yield to the extraordinary scenery.

Stilin first visited the unit three years ago at the suggestion of a friend who was buying in the building, a 1910 warehouse in Red Hook that had recently been converted into condominiums.

After 14 years living in a cozy SoHo two-bedroom (AD, 2019), the designer was ready for a change. "I wanted more space, to live a bit more graciously," he says. One step into the apartment and there was no resisting its scale and sweep: some 3,600 raw square feet, with those broad 13-foot-tall windows on two sides and a U-shaped layout primed for neatly divided public and private realms.