Benjamin Vandiver’s Attention to Detail Shapes a West Coast Client’s New York Pied-à-Terre
The West Village apartment takes cues from Gio Ponti, with Italian midcentury furnishings, terrazzo, and a rich palette
What happens when a designer with a granular approach to interiors takes on a client with big-picture thinking? If the three-bedroom apartment in New York’s West Village transformed by Benjamin Vandiver for an East Coast native living primarily in San Francisco is any indication, the answer is a warm, welcoming environment with grand gestures punctuated by intimate moments. “My client has an engineering background and is used to operating at a very high, strategic level. I’m taken up with the tiniest details—every material, every finish, every placement,” says Vandiver, whose hundreds of microchoices add up to a space that is smart, elegant, and relaxed at the same time.
A passionate and prolific collector, Vandiver keeps a trove of auction scores and vintage finds, and items from his cache helped guide the renovation. “I never need a reason to acquire a wonderful piece,” he says. “If something is really fantastic, it will always find a home.” The five-foot-tall vintage Gio Ponti mirror that Vandiver hung over the roomy tub in the primary bath is a perfect example of this practice. He purchased it “because it is monumental,” not because he thought it suited a particular client.
Installing it in the bath gave the room dignity. And once the designer added a chic terrazzo floor, it led Vandiver down a Gio Ponti path. “We thought Italian midcentury, the Riviera lifestyle,” says Vandiver, who also selected another vintage Ponti mirror for the powder room as well as a settee, won at auction, that once resided in the Ponti-designed Parco dei Principi hotel in Rome, placing it next to a custom Paonazzo Brecciato marble dining table.
Lucky for the designer, his client was game. So Vandiver did what Ponti did so well: He chose a few colors in different materials and intensities, riffed on them, and appointed them so that they move quietly through the residence. There’s a saffron mohair rug cozying up to a tobacco linen–covered sofa in the room Vandiver calls the snug, upholstery in petrol mohair and slubby clay linen in conversation with each other in the living room, and golden henna zellige tiles paired with soft gray Caesarstone in the kitchen.
The project stretched over two years, which suited both designer and client just fine. Vandiver’s distinctive process sets him apart: He is known for his deep curiosity and drive to understand whom he is working with even when it’s a celebrated actress such as Connie Britton or a Hollywood power couple like Paula Wagner and Rick Nicita. “If I had met the client and chosen every piece of furniture and all of the lighting within a month, the space would not reflect her,” he says.
That goes for the art, too. Vandiver admits he cannot walk away from a project when there is nothing on the walls, so he begins the art conversation early. “In the same way I showed my client chairs and fabrics, we looked at art together, and she became totally engaged in the process,” he says. How an 18th-century French tapestry came to hang in the guest bedroom sums it up nicely: The client sent Vandiver an image of one, smitten by it but certain it didn’t suit the midcentury interior. His response? “I saw my job as helping her translate her big-picture thinking into the language of home, helping her to refine and even discover her personal taste along the way. And by the end, the space felt fully her. It doesn’t reflect just her style but also an expansion of it, maybe even a version of herself she hadn’t quite imagined yet.
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2025 Fall Issue under the headline “Sharp Focus.” Subscribe to the magazine.