Inside Studio Peregalli

In this excerpted interview from Grand Tour: The Worldly Projects of Studio Peregalli, a book that showcases the work of Laura Sartori Rimini and Roberto Peregalli, American artist couple Rachel Feinstein and John Currin and English fashion guru Hamish Bowles dissect their common experience of having a home designed by the influential Milan studio

HAMISH BOWLES: What drew you to the original house?

RACHEL FEINSTEIN: It was a folly; the whole thing is an interpretation of an old style, which is what our art is completely about. Each house that the architect Frederick Sterner did on this street is a different folly. They were all multiple family row houses—this was not a fancy neighbourhood in 1901, when he started. Sterner came from England, he was young and he wanted to make a name for himself so he personally bought up all these houses and gave each one a different look. He brought uptown people to this area because of the street and that’s why it’s called the “Block Beautiful”. A historian who was studying Sterner came to visit and told us that it was the most intact and original of all the architect’s projects and begged us not to touch it—and we had every intention of preserving it. Then unfortunately Hurricane Irene came along and we had a torrential leak that destroyed the plaster ceilings all the way through the house. So that’s when our friend Tobias Meyer suggested Studio Peregalli.

HB: What convinced you that Laura [Sartori Rimini] and Roberto [Peregalli] were the right architects for the project?

RF: They were already here in New York—doing your apartment. We went over to see your place and we loved it. I mean, obviously everything was exactly what we liked. The thing that struck us so much was the secret door that they had built, where you had to have the wheelchair access to meet the code.

HB: The original door in the 18th-century French panelling that they had adapted and installed was not wide enough to allow for wheelchair access, so they created a wide jib door that appears to cut into the wallpaper and panelling—a clever trick of the eye.