HOMES OF THE TREASURE COAST
27
The kitchen island was created from one entire slab of Taj Mahal quartzite.
clear that this is a special collaboration. The grandeur extends
through the wide scale living room and dining area, the colors
and textures of the space exquisitely capturing the eternal
turquoise ocean that dominates through the walls of glass
facing east. The rooms seem to float in the air.
GOOD FIT
The builder, Nathan Cooke of Cooke Construction in
Jensen Beach, had referred the homeowners to Downing and
Astras, and everything fell into place from there. When they
first met the clients, Astras and Downing were able to draw
on the substantial resource library of materials they maintain
at their office on Ocean Boulevard in Stuart.
The homeowners brought ideas and a color pallet.
“They knew what they wanted,” Downing says. “Soft
colors of ocean and sky, serene and lovely, that gave us great
direction when we started.”
The design team knew immediately it would be a good fit.
“So much of this business is being comfortable, we had an
interview with them, and we just seemed to click.”
It takes imagination and a good dose of courage to completely
kit out a double penthouse. It would also require
some lateral thinking.
“It’s trickier than just a single-family home,” Astras says.
“It’s fun, figuring out how to do this, working with the contractor
and engineers. We got started before anything, and
were in there first, even before the contractor.”
With a start date, Astras and Downing, along with archi- >>