Relatable Model Units Just a couple of years ago, it wasn’t unusual for developers and their marketing teams to create wildly aspirational model units. Typically, these apartments were designed by notable interior design firms and featured collectible furniture and blue-chip art. In some cases, like at 100 East 53rd Street, model units even resembled private galleries where a pared down selection of furniture deferred to enormous sculptures and canvases.
Now, some projects are aiming to create model units that present just the opposite kind of atmosphere — a warm, comfortable and highly livable space.
When the marketing team for 111 Montgomery in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, set out to build model units, they recruited three social media influencers to create homey looking apartments, including one by Summer Rayne Oakes filled with potted plants and bohemian-looking textiles.
“I think people have a little bit of model unit fatigue,” said Christine Blackburn, an agent at Compass who is the director of sales for the project. “I don’t think it’s fashionable anymore to be ostentatious, even for the ultra wealthy,” she noted. “I think people really are moving toward understated, comfortable and relatable spaces that they really feel at home in.”
