Patrick Bateman doesn’t have much in common with Frank Ocean. After all, the former is a psychopathic mass murderer who works on Wall Street. What he does have in common with Frank Ocean, however, is his good taste in fitting out a New York high-rise apartment, and these shots of Ocean’s digs prove he’s on the same level of interior design chic as the American Psycho protagonist.
A few years back, Ocean purchased a new pad in the freshly developed 56 Leonard St building, fondly known by locals as the “Jenga Building” thanks to it resembling a collection of blocks stacked on top of one another. Designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the building was completed in 2017 (and reminds of Melbourne’s The Icon building in St Kilda from 2015) and was designed to offer a visual reprieve from the relentless precession of uniform skyscrapers in New York City, specifically, “conceived as a stack of individual houses, where each house is unique and identifiable.”
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This progressive approach to architecture clearly caught Ocean’s eye, as he’s been living it up in the Lower Manhattan residence ever since, furnishing his home to reflect his sense of refined personal style. From Ocean’s love of Pierre Paulin chairs and couches to his subtle choice of Boffi Giò lighting, this isn’t your average “rich guy” bachelor pad.
Everywhere you look, the furniture and layout of the apartment reflect the choices of a man with his own eclectic taste for life’s finer things. Ocean sits on a The Flintstones-esque thatched white chair while he muses on his Wurli keyboard, flanked by a spectacular view and fiddle leaf fig. It doesn’t look very comfortable, but comfort doesn’t look like it’s the point.
Elsewhere in the apartment, Frank Ocean has installed a domed pendant light with adjustable door shades to control the light in his kitchen. At the same time, he has a mirror originally designed by the Memphis Group founder Ettore Sottsass. The real Patrick Bateman kicker is the Avai pommel horse he has before the door to his balcony, which isn’t hard to imagine forming a critical part of the American Psycho morning workout.
While the apartment itself approaches the status of cultural artefact, its location is also conveniently located just over a kilometre from Frank Ocean’s recently opened Homer jewellery boutique, a few blocks over on Bowery. Never change, Frank.
