Francis toumbakaris biography

A sanctuary is what the owner was after in the 2,800-square-foot home, with warm, inviting spaces tailor-made to her lifestyle. Yet she had a less straightforward request too. Toumbakaris recalls the message he received during her first viewing of the house: “‘The minute I walked in I envisioned every floor as a completely different thing,’ she texted. ‘And by the way, on the second floor I want a 1930s speakeasy bar.’ When that’s the first text for a new project, your brain goes crazy,” he says.

The Francis Interiors designer’s approach was, “Let’s get this done, let’s go go go go go! I thrive on drama,” he says. “Our general contractor [EVGC Corp] got permits and started hammering, and we were designing as they were hammering.” For Toumbakaris, a theater person who has also performed on Broadway, “Being on the job site is how I design—it’s almost like meditation and enlightenment, all of a sudden things come into my head.”

For his client, Toumbakaris devised something of a time machine through disparate eras as one moves up in the home, all the while adding a sense of modernit

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