A Tribeca Loft Full of Mood and Mystery

"Everything changes in this house," says its owner, Grimanesa Amorós.

- By Wendy Goodman

THE FIRST TIME I visited the loft Grimanesa Amorós shares with her husband, William Grant Fleischer, and daughter Shammiel, it was on the occasion of a dinner party. The vast living room atop a wonderful old Tribeca building was lit only by candles and Amorós's light sculptures, which rest on the floor or float through the air the way jellyfish do through water, pulsing in different colors and appearing to shift shapes.

Amorós was born and raised in Lima, Peru, and the loft is populated with a mix of art and furnishings from her childhood and later travels: rugs from India and Morocco, a coffee table from Indonesia, a bird boat from Myanmar, 17th- and 18th-century lanterns and wooden chests. No two sofas are alike, and during the party, guests drifted among islands of gathering places centered beneath candelabras-many from Peru-or sat around the fireplace or at the wooden table. At one end of the room is a centuries-old convent door. To the side of that, hanging from a ceiling beam by the kitchen, is an indoor swing that Amorós made from a piece of wood.