the attraction of opposites

Interior designer Athena Calderone’s Brooklyn home is a triumph of cool contrasts – a place where curves meet sharp angles, dark balances light and solidity finds its sense of flow

- Jo Leevers

Dotted throughout Athena Calderone’s Brooklyn townhouse are a myriad of sculptural shapes, from classical busts and organic carvings to pieces of furniture that radiate a similar sense of balance. But for Athena, the interplay of forms is more than ornamental. It reflects her approach to designing her family home. ‘Form and scale are everything – I am always thinking about how items play against each other and create a kind of magic,’ she says.

Athena relishes a challenge: she is the woman behind the lifestyle site eye-swoon.com, a stylist, a cook and a writer (her latest book is Live Beautiful) and the opportunity to push herself as an interior designer came in the shape of this brownstone townhouse. ‘I was itching to work on a home that scared me a bit, where I had the scope to juxtapose traditional architecture with my kind of modernity,’ she explains.

She moved here from a contemporary condo in New York (Livingetc visited in March 2014) with her husband Victor Calderone, a music producer and DJ, and their son Jivan, 17. Athena was drawn to the house’s combination of ‘grandeur and grit’ and she couldn’t wait to meld together her favourite architectural influences – plus a good dose of Brooklyn attitude.