Architect Incorporates Mystery into Fifth Ave Apartment

This story isn’t really green, it’s just too awesome to pass up. An architect in NYC decided to go the extra mile – or 10 – when working on one family’s $8.5 million Fifth Avenue apartment. The luxurious digs don’t just house the family’s four children, dog and a lot of very expensive furniture; it’s got some amazing surprises hidden inside.

From The New York Times:

But some of that furniture and some of those walls conceal secrets — messages, games and treasures — that make up a Rube Goldberg maze of systems and contraptions conceived by a young architectural designer named Eric Clough, whose ideas about space and domestic living derive more from Buckminster Fuller than Peter Marino.

The apartment even comes with its own book, part of which is a fictional narrative that recalls “The Da Vinci Code” (without the funky religion or buckets of blood) and “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” the children’s classic by E. L. Konigsburg about a brother and a sister who run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discover — and solve — a mystery surrounding a Renaissance sculpture. It has its own soundtrack, too, with contributions by Kate Fenner, a young Canadian singer and songwriter with a lusty, alternative, Joni Mitchell-ish sound, with whom Mr. Clough fell in love during the project.

Mr. Clough (Mr. Clue?) gathered 40 creative professionals together to create the scavenger hunt inside the apartment, which all starts with a hidden message on one of the bedroom’s ceilings. One cipher led to another, and it took the family months to get through them all. Read the full account at The New York Times for all the details; it’s like an incredibly imaginative children’s tale come to life. How awesome would that be – to move into a new home and have a mystery waiting for you?

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

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