In 1973, supporters of Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club in New York City came up with an ingenious way to raise funds. They would invite celebrated interior designers to redecorate a luxury Manhattan home and charge visitors a fee on the door. A little left-field, perhaps, for a Bronx-based youth centre – but it was a roaring success.
Since then, the Kips Bay Show House has become a must-see event, taking place at a different house each year. Since its inception, it is estimated to have raised over $17m for after-school and enrichment programs for New York City children.
Fast forward to 2019. Korean American interior designer Young Huh is one of 22 designers asked to transform a sprawling five-story townhouse on the Upper East Side. She is given the fifth-floor loft. But this is not just any fifth-floor loft: narrow spiral staircase, escalating windows, total lack of right angles and a curious mixture of low, double-height and sloped ceilings. Architecturally eccentric would be a polite way to describe it. Plain weird would be another. Young was going to have her work cut out.