State
Flow
For a home that reflects the artistry they live for, this Brooklyn-based creative couple tossed out the reno
rule book and made every design decision in real time.
Photography by Nicole Franzen
Words by Lindsey Mather
Styling by Kate Berry
Fernando Aciar and Anna Polonsky weren’t looking for your average contractor. “Usually a construction company will work from an architect’s plans,” says Aciar, a chef, ceramist, and entrepreneur by way of Argentina. That wouldn’t be the case for the couple’s 1899 brownstone renovation (their first together) in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. “We were deciding things ourselves, day by day,” he explains.
Creatives by trade, it was only natural that Aciar and Polonsky, the French founder and creative director of Polonsky and Friends, a mission-driven strategy and design consultancy for the food and restaurant world, would have a hand in every detail—and want to customize as many as possible. It would be a place full of only pieces they absolutely adored, and they’d let the home guide the design. Some flexibility was nonnegotiable.
