Escobar project proves he's not just a downtown guy.

Walking in to the model apartment in the Olcott House feels a bit like walking back into the Jazz Age. To prepare yourself for the experience, contemplate the door hardware before walking in. The undersized chrome-colored doorknob sparkles in that stark way the best Art Deco designs do. Inside, zigzagging wood floor patterns bring you through an open layout, past quartz stone kitchen countertops and through to a powder room adorned with handmade glazed tile and a pedestal sink.

Snooping around the rehabbed corridors of this former hotel, built in 1925, it's possible to feel like you've slipped back in time.

Possible, that is, unless the Olcott's interior designer, Andres Escobar, happens to be in the room.

Dressed in all black with black flowing hair, Escobar's personal appearance is relentlessly modern. Standing in the pre-war Olcott on the Central Park, Escobar looks a touch out of place--like a stray from the SoHo-centric universe of interior design, trying to find his way back south of Houston Street to safety. This perception, Escobar says, is exactly why he was excited to do the designs for Olcott House.

"I think I'm known mostly as a downtown guy, for kind of hipper projects, whatever that means." Escobar said. "But really, I don't think of myself as having a signature style. It very much depends on the project and its goals ... Every project should look different."

Escobar and his Montreal-based firm Andres Escobar & Associes has been making waves in New York, with interior projects ranging from retail and restaurant design to multi-million dollar loft design. In addition to Olcott House, Escobar recently unveiled Infinity Flats on E 21st Street, where interior features in the 4,000 s/f-plus apartments include custom-designed beamed ceilings, French doors and fireplaces fashioned in limestone.

Escobar has been in the business for 20 years now, starting out doing retail build-outs in Montreal. Four years ago, his firm got its first project in New York City, building apartments on Driggs Avenue in Brooklyn. Since then, requests for his services have exploded.

"What I pride myself on is that when I go into the project I try to take myself out of it and think about who the space will ultimately be for," Escobar said. "If I'm designing a space for Lenny Kravitz, maybe it can be a little bit funky. If I'm designing for a grandmother or a family with children, then it's different ... The users will have different needs for their space."

Escobar took into consideration the desires of Chelsea's hippest with his design for Duvet Restaurant & Lounge. This 2'st Street hotspot, according to its website, "features 30 customized 'dining beds.' soft satin banquettes. frosted glass bars and seven intimate 'bedrooms' that are available for the sexiest, most-talked about private parties."

And let us not forget the 8x15-foot aquarium behind the bar that houses over 100 exotic jellyfish.

Though Escobar looks more Duvet than Olcott. he says Duvet design is not one he'd put in his own apartment.

"For my personal space. I am very minimalist." Escobar said. "I want beautiful, clean everything ... Sometimes it's harder to work with almost nothing than it is to work with everything."