It's Still Standing

A designer and Elton John collaborator breathes new life into his 18th-century New York home.

- TED LOOS

Any good home design is a balancing act between the strategic and the sentimental. Too much of the former is more admired than loved, and too much of the latter can cloy.

At his stately Georgian house in New York's Hudson Valley, the designer and shop owner Antony Todd made structural moves right away, replacing all the decrepit windows, adding central air, and raising the heights of the exterior doors. And then he softened it all by painting the exterior pink and filling it with items he has been collecting since he was a teenager.

Todd wanted to establish a place where those memories could be shown to good advantage, but he left enough room for making new ones with his partner, Lautaro Tambutto.

"Form and shape can breathe here," says Todd, a native of Melbourne, Australia, who has been living in the New York area for the past 30 years.

Todd got his start designing events, and he still creates Elton John's Oscar-viewing party every year in Los Angeles.

"With events, it's all about the impact when you first walk into a party," he says. "Take people's breath away and transport them. That's been useful for me." Notably, though, there's a more relaxed sense of pacing in his domestic interior work; he does not rush to unveil all the goodies at once.