user: Write an article with the title: "A Partner in DDC Furniture on Living With the Elements"


assistant: “The Universe” is what Babak Hakakian calls the long white-lacquer-and-glass hallway that runs from the front door of his loft to the living area overlooking Madison Square Park. Lined with his art collection, it is illuminated by four crystal-and-nickel Galaxy chandeliers designed by Jan Pauwels. “I wanted the concept to really shine through,” he explained.

The loft was a collaboration between Mr. Hakakian, a partner in Domus Design Collection, the high-end contemporary furniture company better known as DDC, and Eran Chen, the founder of the avant-garde architectural firm ODA New York. “Eran conceived the loft as four boxes, each representing an element: earth, fire, water, air,” said Mr. Hakakian, 46, whose family-owned business is celebrating its 25th anniversary in New York this year.

The 2,400-square-foot apartment is in the 1884 Western Union Telegraph Building, by the architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, who also designed the Dakota apartment house and the Plaza Hotel, and it was raw space when Mr. Hakakian first saw it seven years ago.

“There was nothing to see — except the view,” he said. “I walked right in and right out.” He didn’t want the listing agent to know how much he loved the space so he’d have some leverage when negotiating the price.

Of course, he knew he’d get all the furniture wholesale. With Ryoko Okada, the director of interior architecture/design at ODA, he combed through DDC’s catalog to elaborate on Mr. Chen’s theme.

For the living area — the “earth” box — they chose a massive free-form sectional designed by Francesco Binfaré that suggests a sand dune. “My kids love to climb on it,” said Mr. Hakakian, who shares the loft with his wife, Karina, and their children, Max, 3, and Mia, 1. “It’s called ‘On the Rocks,’ and it’s very much in the spirit of the room.”

It’s also “bidirectional,” he pointed out, so the family can sit facing into the apartment or looking out the windows at the Flatiron Building and the clock on the Metropolitan Life Tower (now Ian Schrager’s New York Edition hotel). “My daughter is obsessed with the clock,” he said. “Whenever she looks at it she says, ‘Tick tock.’ ”

Omer Arbel’s copper chandelier hanging over the dining table has glass orbs containing live greenery, which reiterate the earth theme, as do the fiddle-leaf fig trees and the containers of miniature cactus.

“This is the fire box,” Mr. Hakakian continued, walking into the adjacent guest room/study, where a curvaceous flame-red ottoman in the middle of the room slid under the concrete-and-epoxy desk he designed, to make space for a Murphy bed to unfold. A limited-edition Ingo Maurer firefly lamp was another wink to the theme, as were the blazing red glass tiles lining the guest bathroom.

The children sleep in an all-white box under another Ingo Maurer fixture, with light bulbs that sport wings and seem to fly through the air. After his first child was born, Mr. Hakakian said, the room’s theme — air — took on a double meaning for him, “because my son is my heir.”

The master suite’s theme is water, and there is little separation between bed and bath. “It’s not a bedroom or a bathroom, but a spa,” he said. “I think it’s the wave of the future. It’s what’s already happened with kitchens, which have become integrated into living spaces.”

While the toilet is hidden in a closet with walls covered in aquamarine glass tile, the sinks are part of the main room, as are the steam shower and the stainless-steel bathtub, which sit in a glass box in one corner. “This is the best thing I did in the apartment,” Mr. Hakakian said. “Sometimes I will throw my kids into the tub, and they will play while I am taking a shower.”

He flipped a switch, and the opaque side wall of the glass box turned clear, making the bathing area visible from the main hallway. “When I have people over, I will put candles inside this glass box,” he said. “It glows and really opens up the space. People walk in, and they’re shocked to see your bathtub, and it evokes an emotion, which is what I think design is all about.”

Mr. Hakakian said his father, Nader, who founded DDC on the Upper East Side in 1991, taught him that selling furniture is an emotional business. “He told me that people will forget what you say to them or what you do for them, but they won’t forget how you make them feel,” he said.

His father and maternal grandfather, Hedi Khalifian, ran successful furniture businesses in Iran before the 1979 revolution. And then “they lost everything,” said Mr. Hakakian, who immigrated from Iran when he was 9 and grew up in Kings Point, N.Y. He went to work at DDC in 1992 and was subsequently joined by his younger brothers, Siamak and Daniel.

A major turning point for the company, he said, was its risky move in 2000 from the heart of the Upper East Side decorating district to Madison Avenue and 34th Street, an area then best known for antique carpet showrooms. But DDC has since expanded to a second store at Madison and 31st Street, and B&B Italia, the Italian luxury furniture company, is building a store across the street.

He is still astonished, he added, that Philip Johnson agreed to design the three-story 34th Street space. “It was a recession, so we approached only top architects, and he came in with the lowest bid,” Mr. Hakakian said. “It was a stroke of luck, and a stroke of genius.”

Mr. Johnson created a showroom with torquing walls, and one of Mr. Hakakian’s most prized possessions is a small wooden model Johnson made of a twisting wall. “It’s one of those worthless things,” he said. “But it’s also priceless.”