White Space

Workshop/APD Goes Minimalist in Asbury Park, Directing All Eyes to the View.

- By Marni Elyse Katz. Photographs by Donna Dotan

What to do when your clients eschew color, pattern, and contrast? “We focus on playing with textures and tones,” says Deana Della Cioppa, senior designer at Workshop/APD. The owners of this three-bedroom condo in Asbury Park, New Jersey, are a hip couple in their seventies who favor minimalistic design. Since it’s a weekend beach home, they asked for a clean feel and a bright, monochromatic palette. “They were very ‘less is more,’ which was challenging because we typically like to layer,” Della Cioppa says.

Della Cioppa and Matt Berman, a founding principal of the architecture and design firm, started with shades of milky whites, beige, cream, and taupe. Then they brought in elements of warm, whitewashed oak followed by pops of black metal that tie to the architecture.

Curating the just-right tones was tricky given the expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows that wrap the unit. “The colors reflected from the sky and the water drastically influence the tones,” Berman says. He and Della Cioppa both note that although their office gets plenty of sunlight, the condo is bombarded to such an extreme that the colors looked completely different in the two spaces. “In the condo, all the colors looked pink,” Della Cioppa says. “There was a lot of trial and error.”