Years ago, a fashion retailer asked Athena Calderone, then known primarily for recipes that were as appealing to the palate as the camera, to host a culinary event. Calderone, the founder of website EyeSwoon, searched uptown and down but couldn’t find a spot in New York that felt just right. “We were trying to find a beautiful kitchen you could host and teach in—and it just didn’t exist,” she says.
Today, Calderone has an Instagram following of 1.1 million, and has graduated from simply cooking garlicky bucatini to designing the tables where it might be eaten, the bowls in which to serve it, and the lighting that sets the scene. And, as of this week, for the first time, Calderone has a kitchen outside of her own home, which is the centerpiece of a larger design space and an office for her burgeoning practice.
“My home had always been my business—and my business has always been my home,” says Calderone. “As I stepped more fully into product design and interior projects, I realized my business needed a physical space that could hold all of that.”
Calderone’s kitchen in The Atelier.
She found just such a place in Tribeca, near where she is also renovating a new home (she sold the Brooklyn townhouse with the marble-filled kitchen that launched a thousand Pinterest pins). In the industrial-style space, which she is calling The Atelier, she can work with her staff of eight, five for EyeSwoon and three for her interior design practice.
“The kitchen is where design and food come together for me. So I knew I needed to have a space that would have a killer kitchen,” adds Calderone. “I’m not an architect, but the architecture helped me organize the space. I didn’t want to hide the columns.”
She created a cube-like structure in the center of the industrial loft to house the kitchen and other office elements. A Paul Dupré-Lafon table inspired the kitchen island, while glass blocks in the cherry paneling above are a nod to Pierre Chareau’s iconic Maison de Verre in Paris. For the backsplash, she found a honey onyx from ABC Stone which is installed in vertical panels with intentionally visible seams.
“I was definitely like, OK, like how can I do something so different with the backsplash,” says Calderone, in order to set it apart from the striking marble-wrapped look of her former Cobble Hill home.
Calderone in The Atelier.
In order to pass muster with her Tribeca landlords, Calderone installed a JennAir downdraft induction cooktop, which allowed her to forgo a hood and maintain the studio’s open flow by installing it directly into the island. Meanwhile, the living areas have a residential feel, featuring artwork by Spanish painter Miguel Macaya alongside vintage finds from Somerset House, Seventh House, and Maison Gerard, as well as Milo Baughman chairs and Louise Roe glassware.
For Calderone, The Atelier also marks her entry into gallery-level lighting and furniture design. Four pieces—counter stools, a pedestal, and parchment lighting prototypes—are currently being developed and the prototypes are installed in the space.
“It’s the first time I’ve leaned into manufacturing my own lighting,” she says. “This space is a way to illustrate everything I’m working on.”
Inside Athena Calderone’s Atelier
