BASEMENT INSTINCT New York designer Kati Curtis’s mantra: Add personality. Photo: Thomas Loof / Art Dept NYWHEN TRYING to make use of a basement, many people default to dusty wine cellars and ignorable gyms. But if you want a truly livable space such as a bedroom down there, said Manhattan interior designer Kati Curtis, “the most important thing you can do is add personality.” Curtis recently turned the garden duplex of a residential building—a first-floor-and-basement space previously a doctor’s office—into a homey apartment for a client.

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Persons: Kati Curtis’s, Thomas Loof, Kati Curtis, ” Curtis Locations: York, Manhattan