Tumblr founder David Karp has completed the redesign of the Williamsburg condo he purchased for $1.6 million in early 2012, giving readers of New York Times' T Magazine the first look in a written profile and four-page spread.
The story's author, Tim Wu, calls Karp "the reluctant technologist," noting that his two-floor condo doesn't contain many screens or "anything particularly shiny or smooth." Instead there are exposed brick walls, oak floors reclaimed from a dairy farm in Pennsylvania and spare pieces of modern furniture in unassuming colors. Wu finds this way of living a "paradox," calling Karp "a high-tech design leader" with a home that features nothing "particularly futuristic."
Looking through the photos, I find nothing particularly at odds with Karp's career history and the design of his condo (done in collaboration with John Gachot, who just did Marc Jacobs' West VIllage home, by the way). Rather, what I see present in the design of Karp's home and in the design of Tumblr is simplicity: As former Mashable editor-at-large Ben Parr wrote of the site in early 2010, "simplicity has always been [Tumblr's] selling point." It takes just a few minutes to set up a blog and start posting.
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The space is also reminiscent of Tumblr's — now Yahoo's — Flatiron office, which likewise features stretches of rough wood floors and, in the early days at least, a great deal of open space. And as The Atlantic has pointed out previously, living minimally is "something of a fashion statement" for the tech industry's richest: Take Mark Zuckerberg's modest Palo Alto home, or Steve Jobs, pictured in his apartment in 1982, as two examples.
The rest of the article goes on to compare New York's tech scene — "has more style," "tie[d] to the creative or media industries" — with Silicon Valley's, as well as Karp's views on various Manhattan neighborhoods (Tribeca: "too much drywall"). You can read it here.
Image: T Magazine