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"View Slideshow\n\nWhen Victoria Hagan stepped out of the elevator and into a client's apartment in Milwaukee's tallest residential building for the first time, she was more than a little stunned. There, spread out in the distance below, was Lake Michigan looking as blue as the Caribbean.\n\nA bigger surprise awaited. As the New York\u2013based designer paced the living room, 425 feet above the lake, she didn't feel the height as she did in Manhattan skyscrapers. The absence of other high-rises was a factor, but there was something else. She sat. And felt that she had floated into a profound calm. Design this apartment? With pleasure\u2014she never wanted to leave.\n\nHagan had worked on homes previously for the owners, whose primary residence is in Los Angeles. Now business was bringing them to Milwaukee and to one of the city's newest landmarks: the University Club Tower, designed by architect Peter Ellis of Skidmore, Owings &amp;amp; Merrill. As it happened, the couple was able to acquire an apartment on the floor above as well, and they combined the units\u2014both raw spaces\u2014into a large duplex with ten-foot ceilings, abundant windows, and expansive vistas. For Hagan, working in collaboration with New York architect Timothy Bryant, there was nothing in the way of creating an extraordinary family retreat.\n\nAfter settling on a plan that placed the main public areas, bedrooms for the couple's two adult children, and a guest room on the larger lower level and a sprawling master suite on the floor above, Hagan set about conceiving the decor to suit the clients' lifestyle. Although the owners entertain regularly and their gatherings are often sizable, their greatest pleasure is just being at home together. So Hagan aimed for a relaxed, informal scheme that would work as well for guests as it does for family, keeping things simple. \"I don't like it when people have to move furniture around,\" she says.\n\nIn the end, the designer's initial response to the space and the views informed most of her choices. \"The star of this film isn't the apartment, it's Milwaukee,\" explains Hagan, who has little interest in creating eye- popping stage sets. \"The city has an understated elegance. You don't want to shout. And that made designing this home especially rewarding for me, because in all my work I think there's grace and beauty in a little . . . less.\"\n\nSome of the apartment's boldest notes\u2014relatively speaking\u2014can be found in the entrance hall, before the sky and light and water become the focus. Visitors are greeted by a bursting multicolor Mark Grotjahn drawing, a Wade Guyton ink-jet print of a stark X motif, and a large expressionist painting by Albert Oehlen in a fairly restrained palette of brown, yellow, and aquamarine. There's also a white monochromatic canvas by Robert Ryman mounted above a 1940s Michel Dufet oak sideboard that could not be less assertive in its urbanity.\n\nA study in neutral hues, the living room features plaster-finished walls, natural oak flooring, and a gray carpet in a textured Moroccan brick pattern. The furniture, much of it designed by Hagan, is covered in beige linen velvet. There are multiple seating areas, but the room is so vast and the cinematic view so compelling that what one senses most is the luxury of unencumbered space, interrupted only by a pair of massive structural columns. \"At first I thought those columns would be a challenge,\" Hagan says. \"Later I saw how they framed the view and grounded the large curve in the living room. It's an unusual plan, a shape I hadn't encountered before.\"\n\nFor Hagan that novelty was anything but daunting. \"The architecture was unconventional, but I always say, \u2018Trust the design process\u2014it gets you where you need to be,' \" she says, noting that the living room's defining curve influenced, at least indirectly, certain decisions. \"It dictated what I chose for color, fabrics, and texture,\" she adds. \"They're all soft.\"\n\nThe profusion of windows allowed Hagan to take a minimalist approach to lighting, installing only a few overhead fixtures. Even the long pendant lamp above the table in the dining room is designed to cast gentle, diffused light\u2014all the better for allowing guests to take in the space's radiant city views.\n\nThe apartment also boasts multiple lake-facing terraces, luxuriously lined in ipe-wood planks instead of stone or concrete. Relaxing on one of these on a warm, sunny day, Hagan notes that \"you almost feel as if you're on a beach looking out at the water.\" The terraces can be a breezy escape from Milwaukee's hot and humid summers\u2014and a bracing one in its equally extreme winters.\n\nHagan has field-tested this aerie in every season. The sky changes, as does the color of the lake. The residence is a quiet, steady constant. \"I was there once when it was three degrees,\" Hagan recalls. \"It was unbelievably cold outside. But spectacularly beautiful from inside.\"\n\nView the slide show of this serene Milwaukee residence."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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