Eric Clough isn't your typical architectural designer. Sure, he'll design you a fine den or kitchen, but he's clearly got a creative streak that goes much deeper than that.
That's why, when given the opportunity, he secretly built an incredible scavenger hunt into a US$8.5-million, 4,200-square-foot Park Avenue apartment that included ciphers, riddles, poems and a lot of hidden doors and compartments.
From the
New York Times:
"In any case, the finale involved, in part, removing decorative door knockers from two hallway panels, which fit together to make a crank, which in turn opened hidden panels in a credenza in the dining room, which displayed multiple keys and keyholes, which, when the correct ones were used, yielded drawers containing acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle, the answers to which led to one of the rectangular panels lining the tiny den, which concealed a chamfered magnetic cube, which could be used to open the 24 remaining panels, revealing, in large type, the poem written by Mr. Klinsky."How amazing is that? It took the family months to discover the scavenger hunt and weeks after that to figure it all out. It's like living in a children's book of some kind.
Unfortunately, magical things like this really are only possible when you're loaded enough to buy an $8.5-million apartment and then give someone another $1.26 million to renovate it without much oversight. But hey, maybe if you're nice to the guys installing your new fridge they'll leave a post-it note with a poem stuck behind it as a secret prize for when you move. Not quite as magical, but I'm trying to work within your means here.
- Images and words by Adam Frucci via Gizmodo, from the New York Times.
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Explanation of images in the picture gallery:
Image 1 - The architectural designer Eric Clough embedded 18 clues in the Fifth Avenue apartment of the Klinsky- Sherry family, leading them on a scavenger hunt through the rooms of their home.
Image 2 - The hunt involved ciphers, riddles, poems and custom-built furniture with hidden drawers and panels. A book with a narrative about a mystery, hidden behind paneling in the front hall, offered clues.
Image 3 - A rectangular panel in the den and guest room opens to reveal acrylic slices, far left, that fit together to form a cube. When the chamfered magnetic cube lodged above the slices is dragged over the 24 panels on a nearby wall, they open.
Image 4 - Behind the panels, large white letters laser-cut into teal blue acrylic spell out the words of a poem written years ago by Steven B. Klinsky, the apartment's owner, for his wife, Maureen Sherry, and their children.
Image 5 - Decorative leather molding stamped with letters in a hallway can be popped out and wrapped around a rod removed from the foot of Ms. Sherry and Mr. Klinsky’s bed so that the letters on the coiled leather spell out a clue.
Image 6 - Behind a drawing of a plane that hangs in a hallway is a little niche containing a scale model of the kitchen, a clue that leads to a musical score written for the apartment, which is hidden in a drawer above the stove.
Image 7 - Millwork panels in a hallway were designed to look like Le Corbusier’s Modular Man and da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Puzzle pieces hidden in one fit together to make a key that opens the other.
Image 8 - Photographs of the apartment’s original interiors have secret writing on the back that reveals the number of salamanders in the apartment. The salamander is a motif that is part of the puzzle and appears throughout the apartment.
Image 9 - Door knockers on opposite walls of a hallway initially seemed pointless. They can be removed and joined to create a crank that opens hidden panels in the dining room sideboard.
Image 10 - The custom-made sideboard has hidden panels on either side that can be cranked open to display keys and keyholes.
Image 11 - When the correct keys are used, hidden drawers are revealed.
Image 12 - The drawers contained acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle. The answers to the crossword puzzle led to the panels in the guest room, behind which were the words of the poem.
Image 13 - In assembling talents for his project, Mr. Clough aimed high. His first choice for the author of the book that contains clues to the scavenger hunt in addition to the mystery story, was Jonathan Safran Foer, whose work contains its own sort of coded narrative pyrotechnics. Mr. Clough sent him a puzzle cube similar to this one, stamped with his firm’s phone number and the word “Please.”