In our vision, a British rocker’s midtown Manhattan apartment would have expensive vintage instruments, empty beer bottles, and a leggy model. Clove cigarettes (or something harsher) may permeate the air, a defaced Union Jack on the walls.
Reality rarely follows expectations. Coldplay lead guitarist Jonny Buckland’s New York home is tidy, literally and aesthetically. Elegantly basic and light-filled, it celebrates dark neutrals, organic materials, and—has rock and roll really come to this?—wholesome family life. Buckland is happily domesticated like his bandmate Chris Martin, who married Gwyneth Paltrow. He and his jewelry-designer wife Chloe have Violet, six, and Jonah, two.
When Buckland works in the U.S., they live in their loft in a 19th-century Romanesque Revival building on Astor Place, near Greenwich Village’s center. The pair lives in Belsize Park, London, but visits the flat several times a year, frequently staying for a month. “We wanted it to be bright and happy for the kids and calming for us,” says Chloe, who grew up in England but spent much of her youth in Jamaica, her mother’s family’s ancestral home.
Since they were in their 30s, they sought a creative team that shared their young, urban sensibility. They chose interior designer Ariel Ashe and architect Reinaldo Leandro’s Ashe Leandro. Ashe met the singer in 2001 while working as an assistant designer at Saturday Night Live, when Coldplay performed. “It was very easy for us to channel their taste,” she says. Friends reconnected them years later. “We speak their language; we have the same references,” Ashe explains. Chloe says the two young designers “got right away that we like things that are sort of masculine and full of right angles.”
After buying the 2,100-square-foot, two-bedroom condo, the Bucklands found it dull. The 11-story brick structure boasts 13-foot ceilings and a landmarked exterior with enormous arched windows, but most of its historic details were removed. The previous owners used bland neutrals and contractor-made doors and walls. The big, generic kitchen was the open-plan layout’s centerpiece.
