Within a Fantastical Amsterdam Penthouse Full of Whimsy

Amusement parks are for the younger. At minimum that is the common knowledge. Occupation Smeets, nevertheless, has hardly ever place absent childish points. For the founder of Studio Position, the provocative solution-style and design firm, youthful recollections of Efteling—the most significant topic park in the Netherlands—form the DNA of his defiantly kitsch creations. Consider an armchair in the kind of a ham-burger, a punching bag that seems to be created of crimson brick, and a table lamp that mimics a half-peeled banana. “If I can visualize all those memories, I can explore new shapes and forms,” describes Smeets, who launched Studio Position, headquartered in the Dutch town of Tilburg, in 1998 it also has an outpost in Milan and is now represented by New York Metropolis gallery R & Business. “Not everyone requires to are living in a modernist white box.”

That would consist of Rolf Snoeren, one particular 50 % of Viktor & Rolf, the Amsterdam trend household famed for surrealistic haute couture that would not look out of area in Efteling’s mock castle. “We attempt not to drop the internal boy or girl,” he points out of his and artistic lover Viktor Horsting’s fantastical ensembles. “What they do in trend,” Smeets responds, “I do in layout.” The couturier’s American husband, Brandon O’Dell, the director of the Amsterdam Evening meal Foundation, an NGO centered on the international fight towards AIDS, calls the designers “cosmic brothers.” Born on the identical working day and in the same calendar year, Snoeren and Smeets grew up only about 12 miles apart and probably crossed paths at Efteling, even though they didn’t meet till they ended up in their 20s and doing the job as interns at the very same business in Paris. Snoeren also takes place to be the godfather of Elvis, Smeets’s toddler son with art and design and style guide Rebecca Sharkey. So when he and O’Dell purchased a penthouse in an 1890s previous bank setting up on Keizersgracht, or Emperor’s Canal, Smeets was the only identify on their shorter listing, even while he’s conjured only a handful of interiors. “It’s not actually anything Occupation does,” Snoeren observes of the designer. “He makes matters. But when we were being chatting about the condominium, he reported, ‘I can do this.’ ”

The outcomes? Phone it a temple to tomfoolery. After an 18-thirty day period renovation that was challenged by nightmarish allow mishaps and discussions mostly conducted through WhatsApp, Snoeren and O’Dell settled into a gleeful Gesamtkunstwerk exactly where almost every single element—from checkerboard–sample glass panels to the button-tufted daybed the place the couple like to gaze across rooftops in the corporation of their miniature dachshund, Little Rose—was conceived by Smeets. “It’s a celebration of our friendship,” Snoeren says, noting that the apartment was concluded in March 2020, days right before Amsterdam went into lockdown. “We moved in, and then we could not go away.”

Given the wonderland that Smeets wrought, they had been delighted to stay place. The entrance door is created of shiny brown resin textured with a hearty a few-dimensional wood grain, as if taken off the hinges of a Playmobil fort. The living area’s fuel fireplace is fronted by a gaping bronze mouth, flames flickering at the rear of bared enamel. A created-in cabinet resembles a grinning robot face, and, à la Studio Job’s punching bag, the kitchen appears to be created of cartoon brick. States Smeets: “It may well not be the most practical kitchen, but for folks who really don’t prepare dinner, it is a beautiful kitchen.” Walls are papered with a flagstone pattern that Wilma Flintstone would have adored, and a material bearing a Dutch artist’s scribbles of pneumatic nudes dresses Charlotte Perriand’s legendary chaise longue. The curved staircase adjacent to the eating region leads to a hearth-motor-red roof terrace shaped like a heart. It’s invisible from the road, because of to UNESCO limits for Amsterdam’s canal space Snoeren wonders if it can be witnessed by planes passing overhead.