Hariri & Hariri Architecture Helps an NYC Couple Downsize With Style

Downsizing isn’t the most glamorous of life passages. Like anything else, though, it can be done poorly, or it can be done well. Luckily for one New York couple of empty-nesters, Interior Design Hall of Fame members Gisue Hariri and Mojgan Hariri know a thing or two about family dynamics—after all, the sisters are now in their fourth decade of running Hariri & Hariri Architecture, having previously studied together at Cornell University. And they used that knowledge to settle the couple into a more compact home while, at the same time, expanding their horizons.

To smooth out what could have been a rough transition, it helped that the architects already knew their clients from working on the spacious prewar apartment that saw them through the school years of a son and a daughter. With the kids gone, the couple set their sights on a 2,100-square-foot replacement in a 1960’s building and got back in touch with the Hariris. “It’s beautiful how they asked us to grow and change with them,” Gisue Hariri says.