October 27, 2024Walking into Amuneal CEO Adam Kamens’s New York City apartment, the first thing you encounter in the entry is a wall of burnished bronze panels, strikingly textured with irregular pocks and pits, suggesting a kind of gritty, abstract minimalist version of a Japanese gilded screen. The pattern, Kamens explains, meticulously replicates the surface of a concrete wall in the garden outside Amuneal’s offices and fabrication facility in Philadelphia.
“We photographed it, digitized it and machined it into these plates, which were then polished and patinated,” he says, noting that it was the first time the company had created panels of this type, on this scale. “Almost everything in this apartment,” he adds, “is a first.”
For Kamens, his family home isn’t just a home. It’s a testing ground for the latest sleek, haute-industrial furnishings, shelving systems, kitchens and other custom interior design components developed by Amuneal, a 1stDibs seller of long standing. That home-as-laboratory approach started with the primary residence in Philadelphia that Kamens and his wife, Kim, share with their college-age daughter. And it continued when the couple, who have long kept a pied-à-terre in New York, decided several years ago to upgrade to a 2,700-square-foot, three-bedroom apartment in the Prism Tower, designed by Christian de Portzamparc. The building, located in the city’s NoMad neighborhood, is a short walk from the 200 Lex Design Center, where Amuneal opened a showroom in 2019.
Before jumping into a major renovation, the Kamenses lived in the apartment for about a year, leaving it mostly as-is while getting to understand its strengths and shortcomings. The dynamic crystalline shape of the 40-story glass tower amplifies natural light and views, but it also results in some challenging configurations in the interior spaces, with conspicuous canted columns that conflict with Amuneal’s predominantly crisp, gridded aesthetic.
“These columns always threw me off,” says Kamens, who worked on the revamp with two longtime collaborators — Yoshi Araki, a former Amuneal staffer who now heads his own New York design firm; and RJ Thornburg, a Philadelphia interior designer Kamens calls “a fairy godfather of design who makes everything better.” One inventive solution the team came up with was to play off the angularity with a new asymmetrical coffered ceiling above the living-dining area, off the open kitchen. The existing ceiling was the painted-over concrete slab of the floor above, so adding the beams not only created visual interest but made it possible to install wiring for music and for a constellation of small DMF ceiling lights with gear-like bronze bezels custom machined by Amuneal.
The affinity for mechanical elements and industrial-inspired materials that defines Amuneal’s ethos comes out of its history, having been founded by Kamens’s parents in 1965 as a manufacturer of magnetic shielding components for electronics, medical and scientific equipment and other specialized uses. Shielding still acccounts for half the company’s business, but when Kamens took over, in 1993, not long after finishing college, he saw a need to diversify and soon began charting a strategy for Amuneal to produce furniture and custom design elements.
Eventually, attention-getting commissions started flowing in from such major retail and hospitality clients as Coach, Calvin Klein, Barneys New York, Saks Fifth Avenue and W Hotels. In 2014, Amuneal opened its first showroom, on American Street in Philadelphia. Kim Kamens served as director there until a few years ago, when they made the decision to close that showroom and shift their focus to the one in New York and, increasingly, to Amuneal’s fast-growing portfolio of high-end residential projects.
In addition to its fully bespoke work, Amuneal has a catalogue of products — a selection of which are offered on 1stDibs — that are made to order, many with customizable options for size, configuration, materials and finish. “Clients come to us because they value the craft, but they also value the individualization of it,” says Kamens. “In almost every project we do, there’s something that’s nonstandard — a finish, a detail.”
That is certainly the case with Amuneal’s kitchens, characterized by distinctive metalwork with hand-applied finishes. For his own kitchen, Kamens used a combination of bronze and charred-oak cabinet fronts. The bronze panels that clad the refrigerator on one side and conceal an HVAC unit on the other are patterned with intricate perforations that lend “a bit more of a noble presence,” he says.
The upper cabinets over the cooktop are finished in an ombré patina that is repeated on the kitchen island, where a pair of stools tuck under a robustly veined Calacatta Viola marble countertop. Above the island, the Amuneal team devised a special hanging version of the Collectors shelving unit, probably the company’s best-known design, using thicker glass shelves and fewer support elements with integrated LED lighting.
“If you want a dynamic wood kitchen, there are a million beautiful workshops that can do it,” says Kamens. “But as soon as you integrate metal into that, the market becomes much narrower, because of the specialized fabrication.”
The same palette of materials was used for the adjacent walk-in pantry and coffee bar — formerly a hall closet — that is enclosed behind a screen of fluted glass framed in brass. Here, Amuneal engineered a trimmer-than-usual mullion between the glass panels, a detail that subtly elevates the refinement.
Also new were the bronze pocket doors added between the entry and the family room. Finished in a warm, rich patina, they are trimmed with bands of solid bronze, with integrated sculptural pulls that exude an industrial Art Deco, Streamline Moderne vibe. A similar effect is achieved by the multiple arched bronze-and-glass doors added elsewhere.
Offsetting the profusion of industrial metals are several large panels of slatted walnut that are used to artfully conceal HVAC vents and controls but also serve to warm up the spaces. That includes the primary bedroom, where floor-to-ceiling walnut slats flank the bed, framing the headboard and wall behind, which are covered in the same emerald upholstery. The green is a rare splash of color in an apartment dominated by neutrals and metallics, another exception being the deep bluish-gray shade used on selected walls throughout, “anchoring” the spaces, as Kamens puts it.
Furnishings, some of which Kamens says are “still in process,” are a mix of Amuneal designs and other contemporary pieces, plus a smattering of vintage. The family room is outfitted with a version of Amuneal’s Loft shelving system and a sprawling, low-slung custom sofa — designed with a cutout that allows it to wrap snugly around a column — plus soft Beni Ourain rugs acquired on a trip to Morocco. The casual seating area next to the Roche Bobois dining table and Branca Lisboa chairs is anchored by an Edra Sherazade sofa that Kamens describes as an inviting spot “just to kick out” or settle into for after-dinner conversation.
The apartment’s art ranges from works by Philadelphia artists, like the arresting portrait of a woman by Shawn Theodore that presides over the entry area, to Mark Seliger’s iconic photograph of Barack Obama from behind, which hangs in the bedroom hallway, to an eye-catching ceramic sculpture of an infant by Peruvian-American artist Kukuli Velarde, displayed on a specially made wall mount in the family room. More works are to come. “We always leave room for art as we find it and fall in love with it,” says Kamens.
He also collects rare and unusual flea-market finds — from apothecary and scientific items to tools and natural specimens. While most of his curiosities are kept at Amuneal’s headquarters, a few idiosyncratic pieces pepper the New York apartment, including the playful submarine-whale desk light by artist Evan Chambers in his office, off the couple’s bedroom.
Kamens admits to the occasional battle with his wife over his treasures. “Even if she loves it and I love it,” he says, “sometimes she just wants it to stay in my space.”