… His Side Is More Minimalist
Iwouldn’t call myself a scholar,” Stephen says. “I am a Japanese enthusiast.” His work as a venture capitalist brought him to Japan in the ’90s, when he sold one of his companies. The trip had a lasting impact on him.
His side in what had been two rooms for their children is now what Stephen calls the globus ryokan, a place originally created to conduct tea ceremonies that offers quiet reflection and guest quarters for visiting artists who are familiar with the ryokan way of life: no western furniture to sleep on, but rather tatami mats and futons.
He researched artisans and discovered the Japanese carpentry company Miya Shoji, owned by Hisao Hanafusa. “I had to ask him like six or seven times to come and do it because he wanted to make sure there was a commitment. These rooms are very unique,” Stephen says of his side of the seventh floor. “And painstaking to build.” The first room to be built was the one by the windows with six tatami mats and shoji screens and a bamboo ceiling that hides the mechanics. “A teahouse requires certain things: a tokonoma, which is a sacred alcove that needs two entrances, so in the end I decided to create a teahouse upstairs and to make it a residence for myself.”
Stephen converted space he acquired on the eighth and ninth floor to his interpretation of a Japanese teahouse. He hid a Murphy bed behind a shoji screen and added a Japanese soaking tub. There is also room for exhibitions and gatherings to host events for his work with Asia Society and Japan Society.
When Stephen is asked how he feels in Dorothy’s space, he replies, “Not that comfortable. Dorothy has given me enough leeway so I can live; I mean, we are old enough that we have done our duty of raising children—we’re not pinned down to one set of rules. I respect what Dorothy has done. She’s a museum person, she’s a collector; it’s not my aesthetic now.”
The room created for the tea ceremony has a table that can be raised from the floor along with the seating.