AphroChic Magazine: Issue No. 5

Interior Design
The breakthrough moment came when
the attention resulted in an eight-page spread
for a major publication. “I started getting
messages from friends saying 'Your space
is amazing. Your taste is amazing.' And in
that moment, I understood, maybe I've done
something interesting with my space. Maybe
I have a certain point of view or way that I do
things that's interesting to someone beyond
me.”
With the acknowledgement of his own
talent came the question of how best to express
it. It was his first time telling a story that was
completely his own, and naturally Glass felt
protective of it. The point of view he was expressing
in his home was gaining notice, but it
was only one home. And working as a designer
with clients would largely be about expressing
the client’s aesthetic, not his own. He needed
another canvas to paint on, another stage from
which to tell, not just his own story, but all of the
stories he had spent so many years collecting.
The result was a space that is equal parts decor
shop and interactive experience - aptm Berlin.
Opened in 2017, in the Wedding neighborhood
of Berlin’s Mitte district, aptm Berlin
is as much an event space as it is a retail shop.
At nearly 2,500 square feet, this one-of-a-kind
boutique encompasses a large dining, library,
and home office space. “The first response
should be a sense of home, of belonging,” Glass
says of guests visiting for the first time. “aptm
Berlin is an abbreviation for apartment, but it
also is an acronym for ‘a place to meet’. I wanted
to create a space where people and things come
together. A space where people can discover
and be inspired.”
With aptm Berlin, Glass has the best of
both worlds — a place to present his vision
without compromise and with the flexibility
to be changed over and over again, turning one
space into many. And in fact, it is this flexibility
of concept, and the frequency with which
Glass exercises his prerogative for change that
have become the heart of the attraction. “It’s
occasionally seasonal,” he says of the transitions,
“But sometimes also in response to a
recent trip, or a new product that’s been introduced.
And sometimes it’s just because I fancy
changing a wall color and then switching everything
to suit that. This idea is also what
keeps people coming back — the newness and
the desire to discover something unseen.”
From the beginning, Glass envisioned
aptm Berlin as more than a retail shop. With his
rotating designs at center stage, he has used the
interest the space generates as a way to draw
more people in, using this platform to create
and share experiences of their own, while continually
breathing new life into the store’s retail
side. “The space has really morphed more
into a living gallery. People book it for dinners,
photo shoots, filming, meetings. And via these
bookings, people experience the pieces we
have for sale and inquire after to buy things.”
While the space’s first display incarnation,
the aptly titled Birth, conjured images of
something new being brought into the world,
the revision immediately following, called
Dolce, stems from sources far closer to the designer’s
own life and experiences. “I draw inspiration
from so many different places and I
wanted to have the flexibility to show different
ideas,” Glass reveals. “Just before Dolce I’d
begun seeing a therapist who focused on mindfulness.
She really helped me to embrace this
idea of living in the moment.”
Glass extrapolates, drawing the universal
out of the specific to create designed tableaus
that resonate on a number of different levels.
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