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Austin Home Winter 2014 93

the high life

Glamorous, sophisticated and highly stylish, the penthouse residence of a philanthropic Austin couple has even its homeowners in awe

BY GENE MENEZ

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CASEY DUNN

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94 Austin Home Winter 2014

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hilanthropists Sandra and Walter Wilkie know how to do a home right. Over the years, the cou-ple has lived everywhere from a glamorous Man-

hattan apartment with Central Park views to a beautiful duplex with Arts and Crafts detailing on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to a residence in a quasi jungle in the Coconut Grove section of Miami, which was so well decorated that it made the pages of Elle Decor.

Yet the Wilkies choose to l ive in a 6,000-square-foot penthouse on the 29th floor of the Four Seasons Residences, and it is easy to see why. The apartment is part home, part entertainment space and 100 percent design brilliance. The two-bedroom home—which has virtually unobstructed views to the north, west and south—is a gumbo of design aesthetics: glamorous, rustic, and ultramod-ern. But they all blend together effortlessly to create a delicious and unique environment.

“How can you not like this apartment?” Sandra asks rhetorically. “I think this is the prettiest place I’ve been in, in Austin.”

The roots of the project were planted in 2009 when the Wilkies, then living in New York City, bought a new, 3,000-square-foot unit in the Four Seasons Residences to serve as a secondary home and hired noted Austin designer Mark Cravotta to decorate the inte-

“How can you not like this apartment?” Sandra asks rhetorically. “I think this is

the prettiest place I’ve been in, in Austin.”

The originality of the space goes from head to toe: The ceiling is covered in silk that was hand-painted while wet; and the gray sectional with the integrated tables and lamps was designed by Cravotta and custom made.

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rior, in his words, “from soup to nuts.” The Wilkies were so pleased with his work that, after buying the adjacent 3,000-square-foot unit three years later with the intention of joining the spaces and making it their primary residence, they asked him to reprise his role.

Cravotta accepted and hired architect David Webber (of Webber + Studio Architects) to reimagine the new, combined space. “The units were mirror images of each other,” Cra-votta recalls. “You don’t need two kitchens, two of everything. So I thought, We really need to reconceive how that would all work.” Cravotta also brought along his go-to contrac-tor, David Wilkes (David Wilkes Builders).

The team kept a couple of principles in mind with the new space. First, Cravotta wanted to carry the level of sophistication used in the first unit to the expanded home. Second, since the Wilkies are such active philanthro-

pists (they support, among other causes, the Austin Lyric Opera, Texas Performing Arts and the Texas Book Festival), they wanted a home with enough space to host fundraising events for up to 80 people.

“They wanted a really large entertaining space in connection with their existing unit,” Webber recalls, “and there was not really any choice other than gutting it and starting over.”

The combined space required knocking down some walls, constructing other walls, repurposing spaces (e.g., a bedroom in the original unit was converted to Sandra’s office) and generally thinking outside the box.

The result is a home that drips with style and sophistication. That is evident from the moment a guest enters the unit and is greeted by a grand entry featuring a floating bench that is partially held up by a hand-forged bronze chain. (Bronze is a look that is repeated often in

Joining the two units required repurposing spaces, such as a

secondary egress that has been converted into a high-end wine

room (top left) and a bedroom that became Sandra’s office (bottom left).

Materials played a significant role in the design, from the 78-foot-long wall made from thousands of black

leather pieces (top right) to the linen fabric that has been used as wallpaper in one of the bedrooms.

The floor in the unit is composed of 3-inch-wide white oak boards that have been through an extensive preparation process before being laid out in a Marie Antoinette pattern.

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the penthouse.) The bench connects to a wall that is covered in brilliant red-and-chocolate dimensional ceramic tiles that only the men-tally strong can resist touching.

The sophistication continues in the wood floors, which are 3-inch-wide white oak boards that have been milled, beveled, stained, laid out in a Marie Antoinette pattern and then separated by interlacing basket-weave bor-ders. The craftsmanship adds dimensionality to the floor and gives it the effect of looking 50 years old even though it’s not even five.

In the newer, more formal half of the unit (the original half is the less formal side), beau-tiful hand-painted silk covers the ceiling. The silk was painted while wet, which causes the bleeding effect that makes the ceiling look like a large piece of watercolor art.

The most stunning piece of craftsmanship, however, is a 78-foot-long wall that’s wrapped in thousands of pieces of black leather from a tack shop in Michigan. To execute the idea for this wall, Cravotta hired his dad, Jimmy, who beveled the edges of every piece.

Since the leather came in six different thick-nesses, the wall has texture to it. But since the leather is black, photos alone cannot convey either the texture or the craftsmanship that was involved in creating the wall. “I think my dad was working on it for 12 hours a day for six to eight weeks,” Cravotta says, “not to mention the two weeks he spent here installing it.”

Colors from all over the rainbow are used in the apartment, from the Howdy Y’all sign (from

Roadhouse Relics) in the casual living space (this page) to the deep eggplant silk wallpaper and blood red

cushions in a back television room (right) to the bright orange chairs in the casual dining area.

“The units were mirror images of each other,” Cravotta recalls.

“You don’t need two kitchens, two of everything. So I thought,

We really need to reconceive how that would all work.”

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Cravotta is pretty handy himself, having designed many pieces of furniture in the unit. Among the pieces he drew up (and had made) were the U-shaped sectional with integrated tables and lamps; the bed and headboard in the “summer suite” on the north side of the unit (the southern side holds the other bed-room or “winter suite”); and the bookshelf and desk in Sandra’s office. Cravotta and Webber collaborated on the design of the massive wal-nut bookcase that greets guests as they enter.

Throughout the home, materials mix with textures. There are pieces that are rich and glamorous, such as an over-the-top 1940s Venetian chandelier from an old European hotel that hangs over a shipyard-steel dining table. That table is juxtaposed against ultra-modern, high-polished lacquered chairs with black leather cushions. Below everything, of course, is that rustic wood floor.

“I like the way all of the different finishes come together,” Wilkes says. “There are a lot of different finishes, but it doesn’t feel cut-up.”

Says Cravotta: “Mixing those elements helps the space really feel special, but it still feels comfortable. Hopefully it doesn’t feel like it should be behind a velvet rope. You can still plop down and make yourself comfortable in any of the spaces.”

Or make yourself at home, permanently, as the Wilkies did.

The “winter suite” (right) features a 1950s

chandelier from an old burl wood stump, while the bathrooms

are decked out in Carrara marble.