CHELSEA · MODEL UNITS · DEVELOPER WORK
Ruby Chelsea
Six model unit residences in a new luxury condo building on West 28th Street, designed to anchor sales across the wide Chelsea buyer mix. Each unit was built around a different lifestyle archetype the sales team had developed — from a creative working in design to a tech programmer, from a sophisticated urban couple to a hospitality industry socialite. The studio interpreted each archetype into a fully resolved home.
LOCATION
Manhattan — Chelsea / Ruby Chelsea, 243 West 28th Street
PROJECT TYPE
Model unit design · Developer work
SCOPE
Six model units, studios through two-bedrooms
YEAR COMPLETED
2024
SQUARE FOOTAGE
600 – 2,900 sq ft per unit
THE BRIEF
Six units. Six different lives.
A returning Douglas Elliman engagement after 7 Dey — this one with MAG Partners as the developer of a new luxury condo building on West 28th. The sales team had built psychographic profiles for the Chelsea buyer mix, drawing from the surrounding industries: creative and design professionals, hospitality and entertainment, banking and investments, tech, and fashion. Each of the six model units would be designed to fit one of those archetypes.
The sales team supplied mood boards for each unit — palettes, hobbies, interests, fashion notes, a portrait of who the unit was meant to attract. The studio took each mood board and built it into a full interior: finishes, furniture, lighting, art, the specific texture of how that person would live. Every unit was raw and mid-construction when the work began. The full build-out had to land in time for the building's Temporary Certificate of Occupancy, so the first prospective buyers walked into completed apartments the day the building opened.
THE APPROACH
Six personalities, six interiors.
Each unit carried its own color story, finish program, and furniture vocabulary. Limewash paint and soft textures shaped the sophisticated urban couple's apartment. A tropical foliage print wallpaper grounded a bachelor pad in a confidently masculine direction. An African mudcloth-inspired ochre wallpaper turned the hospitality archetype's unit into something theatrical and warm. A primary-color palette with graphic prints gave the tech programmer's apartment a playful, screen-native register. A clean white unit punctuated with color and a strong gallery wall spoke to the fashion industry buyer.
The build-out happened in parallel with the building's construction. Each apartment was installed while contractors finished the cores around them; the studio team coordinated deliveries through active construction hoists, scheduled installs between trade handoffs, and made sure every unit was photograph-ready by the building's TCO date. By opening day, all six apartments were finished — six complete narratives, each fully resolved, ready for the first walk-through.
THE PROJECT
Room by room.
MATERIAL PALETTE
The signature finishes.
Limewash paint
Tropical foliage wallpaper
Kuba cloth ochre wallpaper
Earthy color palette
Ochre velvet
Urban couple's apartment — wall treatment
Bachelor pad — primary wall pattern
Hospitality archetype's apartment — feature wall
Tech professional's apartment
Fashion industry apartment — accent fabric against white
THE RESULT
Six apartments, six narratives, one opening day.
Each unit landed as a fully resolved home — not a model space, but a complete narrative a prospective buyer could read in five minutes and recognize, room by room, as someone like themselves. The sales team walked buyers into the apartment that fit their life and let the design close the rest. For Douglas Elliman, this was the second collaboration with the studio after 7 Dey, and the second time the model unit program ran as more than a finish package — as the building's voice in physical form.
FROM THE CLIENT
"Studio Kestrel has impeccable taste and worked with us to carefully curate every room. Amazing response time and such pleasant energy throughout the entire process."
Erika Marks
Director of New Development Leasing, Douglas Elliman Development Marketing
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