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"View Slideshow\n\nInterior design is not only a visual art but a form of storytelling that builds suspense, conveys mystery and defines character. Juan Pablo Molyneux is a witty fabulist who always likes to imagine how his work will \"read\" from the threshold of a residence the first time that his clients entertain. The guests of a Chicago real estate mogul and his wife ride the elevator to the penthouse of a modern tower overlooking Lake Michigan, enter a cozy vestibule and pass into a plush Empire library that Molyneux calls \"the enough room.\" \"It gives you just enough information about the couple who live here,\" he explains. \"It introduces their European taste, and it suggests that they prize a certain formality. You can imagine them dressing for dinner even when they're alone. The polish is a mirror for their social confidence.\" (One isn't surprised to learn that the husband used to race\u2014and still collects\u2014vintage Ferraris. His red lair purrs with the same kind of power.)\n\n\"I thought of the lakeside villas in France, Italy and the Baltic that were built in the Neoclassical period. Why not conjure such a villa at the top of a midwestern skyscraper?\"\n\nMolyneux has often designed ch\u00E2teaux and palaces with a venerable history, including his own pied-\u00E0-terre in Paris, the H\u00F4tel Claude Passart (see Architectural Digest, March 2004). But in this case, he was inventing a past that didn't exist. His clients live in a 20-year-old building, and before he transformed the penthouse, the d\u00E9cor, says the mogul, \"was spare, southwestern and completely monochrome. But a few years ago I fell in love with the French 18th century, and I began to collect art and furniture of the period, with a focus on exceptional signed pieces. We wanted an appropriate context for them, which obviously called for a radical renovation. One of our dealers, a legendary Left Bank antiquarian, introduced us to Juan Pablo.\"\n\nWhile Molyneux does not, notably, love Navajo beige, he found much else about the penthouse to admire. \"The views are literally dazzling,\" he remarks, \"and the space is grand, with 25-foot ceilings in the living room. But that kind of exposure heightens the need for intimacy and refinement. Our challenge was to preserve the drama of the architecture while creating a microclimate of elegance. I thought of the lakeside villas in France, Italy and the Baltic that were built in the Neoclassical period. Why not, I thought, conjure such a villa at the top of a midwestern skyscraper?\"\n\nThe couple had recently acquired the adjacent apartment, nearly doubling their square footage, and Marvin Herman, a Chicago architect, had gutted and conjoined the two properties with finesse. But the one immovable feature was a limestone staircase at the center of the two-story living room. \"The only solution,\" Molyneux says, \"was to make a virtue of it\u2014articulating the space the way you might facet a flawed diamond. If you cut it expertly, you enhance its clarity. If you fumble, it's a disaster.\"\n\nThat image of lapidary rigor is not simply a metaphor. Molyneux disguised the asymmetrical planes of the main floor with gilt Neoclassical paneling, rosettes and columns fabricated in France. He \"faceted\" the reception area into four separate salons graduated in size like the jewels in a parure. Each one is anchored by an antique carpet and by a princely work of art\u2014a Renaissance tapestry, a late-Baroque Venus and Adonis\u2014that echoes, but also rivals, the monumentality of the windows. It took more than a year, the mogul says, and four or five trips to Europe, to assemble the furnishings. Molyneux grouped French armchairs of exalted provenance with low intarsia tables, custom sofas and Asian sculpture\u2014a classical composition framed by the cascades of pumice-colored silk draperies and unified by a soft, opaline palette that changes with the light.\n\nIt took more than a year, the mogul says, and four or five trips to Europe, to assemble the furnishings.\n\nOne associates Neoclassicism with the pure proportions of a Greek temple, the pallor of marble and the tranquillity of a bucolic landscape. It was, however, a seething period of political and artistic ferment that saw the birth of Romantic literature and the rise of Napoleon. And beyond the living room, the penthouse vibrates with intensity. Molyneux floored a cobalt guest room with trompe l'oeil marquetry, gold-leafed the moldings and hung the walls with a bold imperial stripe. The master suite is a seductive boudoir swagged in taffeta and trellised with flowers. The palazzo dining room is a nocturne of pure virtuosity. The walls are paneled in gilt-embossed leather, and the table carpet is a masterpiece of 17th-century needlework\u2014\"one of the rarest textiles of its kind,\" Molyneux says, \"ever to be auctioned.\" Lovebirds and pansies on a suite of Louis XVI chairs, precious ewers on a giltwood console, famille verte cachepots blooming with orchids and an Empire chandelier dripping with crystal ought to be\u2014but somehow are not\u2014too much.\n\nHere, perhaps, we should end our story with a brief envoi addressed to the Bauhaus architects for whose work Chicago is famous and in which context Molyneux's \"villa\" is rather subversive. Less isn't more when more is just enough."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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