A model apartment at the Yard, with art and furniture for sale
From the October issue: New York City home-seekers are used to model apartments staged with generic, if tasteful, furniture.
Not so at Long Island City’s the Yard, a new 83-unit condo. Potential buyers who visit the building’s model apartments find galleries full of eclectic pieces like Amy Ruppel’s oval portraits of extinct birds, which have words like “moron” scrawled across them.
The Yard’s model apartments were decorated by We-Are-Familia, an international collective of over 50 artists, including local photographer Sam Contis and Brooklyn-based furniture designer Nightwood. Almost all of the art, chinaware, lighting — even a handful of dresses — is for sale, in what is essentially a pop-up shop. Walk-ins are welcome, and interested customers are handed a price sheet for the furnishings.
The Yard isn’t the first development to try this model apartment/pop-up shop approach. In 2008, the Battery Park City condo Riverhouse hired Vivavi, a green furniture company, to furnish and sell pieces in their model units. [more]
