interior design

Shapes and forms matter. In the pattern-seeking modules of the human brain, shapes and forms communicate; what they communicate to you will be a product of the culture and territory in which you were formed. For some reason culture is particularly when shapes are combined into more complex configurations. The one exception is organic forms, especially plants. Their symbolism tends to be more universal as they are seen to be pleasing and comforting by all. To us, a plant's asymmetry conveys spontaneity. The history of plants being used in the sculptural forms and motifs of many traditions goes back eons. These motifs were seen as a way of expressing everything from long life, healing, renewal, to fertility, strength and longevity. Perhaps for their medicinal as well as poisonous characteristic––life giving and life ending––plants supernatural project supernatural qualities in traditional art like magic, prophecy, and all seeing also charge traditional plant symbolisms in art.

Organic forms can also have a transformative role in the context of a design. As in the Sebastian Errazuriz Tree Table below, the mix of the organic with the industrial in the material and shape of the branch table base has the effect of softening the industrial-ness of glass.

Korean designer Chul An Kwak's eschews the static. He found inspiration in the movement of a running horse but knew he wouldn't get there with straight planar legs and right angles. Through his use of sculpted wood, the designer wanted to convey not just dynamic motion but dynamic emotion. The table have feeling of unresolved tension, as if it trying to escape from the room,  a horse galloping to freedom.

Below, another Korean, artist MyeongBeom Kim takes the concept to the extreme, in the case of the carved out chair from the tree he plays with industrializing the chair's organic source material, and in the urinal piece below that, nature beautifully blooms from the abundance of human waste. Below Kim's work, nature—either as a single element or as a faux jungle—projects a sense of vigor and hope into a stark hardscape or an otherwise barren vista.

Below, Kim may be commenting on the diminishing natural environment, our profligate use of water, and unsustainable production of waste.

Above, the accidental forest; below, the domestic micro-jungle; and below next, an integration of the urban with what it replaced.

A forest appears to be grow from the model's head like Athena out of the forehead of Zeus. Below, nature manipulated by nature as if they were bespoke creations made to order. At bottom: The building's glass gives back some of the sky.

So, that cool lifestyle and entertainment site Refinery 29 put together a list of 23 of the most "inspiring interiors and drop-dead gorgeous ambiance [to enjoy] whilst noshing."

And on that list? Well, one of ours. Check it out here.

At first glance the buildings of Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa appear severe and nearly monolithic, a kind of Brutalism meets Deco by way of Japan with a few splices of Russian Constructivism and Italian sensuousness.

Only upon closer study are the delicacy and detail of his buildings revealed. It's those meticulous watchmaker-like details that draw us in.

For his Brion Tomb the Japanese Ensō intersects the long plane of a poured stone wall: Under Scarpa's delicate hand they are like two bullet holes of zen enlightenment artfully blasted into a military bunker.

The stroke of the chisel above and the caress of the sandpaper below.

Below, a riff on the Fibonacci sequence: Curves, spirals, and triangles mingle with the quadrilinear while neutrals and colors converge with wood and stone.

What is now a dying art was once the artist's telescoped message to the observer of the designer's mysterious process: Another unfortunate artifact in the age of computers, Scarpa's drawings are as distinguishable to the master's work as were Frank Lloyd Wright's to his own.

Below, Scarpa's drawings for Olivetti Design Camp competition, 1956.

Below, studies for the Gavina store mosaic, 1961-63:

Below, drawings for a holy-water stoup (left) and constructional details for a candelabrum:

Images and quotes below taken from the book Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Works by Francesco Dal Co & Guisseppe Mazzariol.

Scarpa's work is made up of fragments without being fragmentary. Vittorio Gregotti

... these fragments are both the remains of a completed construction and the uncompleted and unplaced elements of a construction yet to be built. But they are not fragments of history, nor are they splinters of the future. These fragnemts are the remains of a solitude, that of a master who had the courage not to desire pupils. Franco Purini

We've tread this flooring path before and again two years ago. At the time, plank floors were on an ascent as a design trend and well covered amongst the designer literati. Since then, choices have evolved and expanded. We offer some of the more noteworthy.

Three examples of a more straight ahead vision of the wood plank floor: Shiniest and straightest above with increases in rusticity as it goes down.

We've established the theme; below are the variations:

The Bolefloor, hardwood cut along the curves of the natural grain:

A plank floor with coordinated colors streaked into the grain:

Violet, here:

Rustic herring bone:

And a super tarted-up version:

Yet another approach to wood:

Not entirely sure if this floor is even wood, there was no corroborating information given with the image. (There appears to be no seams like you find with tiling.) Whatever it is, it's a bold statement.

Mafi features a line of natural wood flooring in a variety of 3-d textures:

Another Mafi offering: Carving Grunge 1.

A medley of grains: This patterned wood floor is reminiscent of rusted iron, playing with the perception of the material.

An interesting mix of textures: In a design by designer Waldo Fernandez a wood floor overlayed with a rug that has the appearance of a wood floor.

Often in Sean's garden designs, he has used patterns of stone dissolving into lawn or greenery. Here, similarly, tile and wood visually melting together:

A medley of tiles: Different tile patterns and styles blended for impact.

In this design, as seen in the plans below, the medley was executed from room to room so that every room had its own bold tile patterns. Examples follow:

And even bolder:

Not tile but concrete with random gum spots:

See Part 1 here.

This is not a pipe: Magritte called it The Treachery of Images. More treachery below, taking on the same idea only this time with chairs. Chairs to confound your concept of what a chair should look like.

As we've noted before, when it comes to chair design—traditionally—it's mostly a conservative medium. Forms are followed from history, sometimes very ancient history, and tend to get repeated in endless iterations. New tends don't enter into the design vernacular much. And how long will this thrall to all things mid-century go on?

Be that as it may, let's look at chairs that draw their design inspiration from somewhere other than chair history: Chairs that take their influence from other parts of the design world. Something of the unexpected: Not always or necessarily beautiful, but different.

Not sure if these wall-mounted chairs above are even usable in this configuration but the concept is certainly... interesting.

The Beehive chair from Kiwi designer Graham Roebuck. The materials are described thusly: Made of Lakepine Zero low emitting MDF and polished in beeswax to the edges, while tepid White Formica high pressure laminate envelopes the perpendicular faces of the piece.

The Bloom Chair by Kenneth Cobonpue; Here's how one seller describes it: Deep soft folds of handmade microfibre stitched with a steel base in different fabric colors that pop! Very comfortable and very artsy. Or kind of like a meat-eating orchid, as someone once said.

This bowl-with-a-hole chair is from Dublin based Tierney Haines Architects:

Where they found the inspiration: Donald Knorr's award winning Knoll 132 from 1950, designed to be low cost with steel legs and an aluminum seat. The chair has been discontinued.

The Ball chair by Finn Eero Aarnio, ca. 1963:

An even more flowery take on the Saarinen Tulip chair, this one from Australian designer Sydney Feathersone, 1969: the Stem chair.

This Guadi chair from Dutch designer Bam Geenen takes inspiration from its namesake basing it upon the master's use of arches for optimum strength.

Here, barely a chair from Oki Sato by way of Nendo.

The Vermelha chair from the Brazilian design team of the Campana Brothers. The chair is a steel structure with hand woven and dyed cotton rope.

Designer Yangsoo Pyo created these Afro chairs out of steel wire coiled (think two-ring binder springs) into a giant Brillo pad. Despite its appearance, it's claimed that the chair is actually quite comfortable.

Oskar Zieta's Chippensteel chairs:

The chair as a Buick: The Maxell chair by Harald Belker. You won't be surprised to learn that Belker actually designs cars for Porsche and Mercedes Benz. The chair was reportedly inspired by the Maxell ads with the guy being blown away in the Le Corbusier chair.

Another barely there chair, this one designed by Verner Panton, another take on a chair done for Herman Miller in the 70s. Panton is considered to be one of Denmark's most influential 20th century furniture designers. As Denmark was one of the apogees of the Mid-Century, this is no small claim.

The Lodge chair by Baltasar Portillo:

The crouching Z-Chair by—who else?—Zaha Hadid:

More to come in Part 3.

It seems the hue we think of as teal tends to be more of an umbrella term than a specific color. We know it's generally considered blue-green but it can run the gamut of light blue to greenish gray. One person's teal may be another person's turquoise.

As colors tend to have faddish runs in design culture, teal had a brief one of its own recently. Teal is also a classic hue that never goes out of fashion.

The word itself comes from the Teal duck which displays the color on its head. Also below, a tropical sea, peacock feather, satellite view of a plankton bloom, and an agate rock give further proof of nature's own predilection for the hue.

In an environment of neutrals teal bangs up nicely.

Subject to the cycles of fashion Teal is also a classic that never goes completely out of fashion. Land's End and Abercrombie & Fitch will always have space for teal in their catalogs.

Part of teal's success as a fashion color has to do with its complimentary effect on the natural pinks of light skin. As you can see above, it seems to work with skin of any tone.

More teal and neutrals interplay:

Teal pumping up the vibe of an office space.

In a more traditional, low key setting:

And the slightly more garish:

The title is from this Langston Hughes poem.

Designers design. Clients expect something designerly and magical. In the process a designer is often tempted to leave some of him/herself behind. Actors might call this chewing up the scenery. For a designer it's more like a spitting out, leaving his/her DNA all over the place. It's an affliction that effects young designers especially. It's not necessarily a bad thing, the only test worth considering is whether the work is good. In making the case for restraint, great industrial designer Dieter Rams said: "Good design is as little design as possible." (See here for Rams's Ten Principles of Good Design.) Interior designer Ettore Sottsass said the best decoration is a kind of "ritual whisper."

But not everyone is looking for a whisper. For those who prefer their design with a louder voice, there's plenty of support for that too.

The image above from Elle Decor's A-list of Top 25 Decorators. (See more here.) Not to decry design that is designerly, minimalism and reductivism present a different ambiance. As a vibe it's a whole other frequency. There are always many possible solutions for good design, Dieter Rams aside.

A room from legendary interior decorator Albert Hadley:

Hadley creates a spirited conversation with texture, bold patterns, shocks of color, and material contrasts: Like a family discussing politics during a holiday dinner.

Now, for something completely different: The infamous Lower East Side apartment of MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach.

The color scheme is black and white and his decor is nearly non-existent. "Empty" and "vacuum" are some of the words critics have used to describe it. Biesenbach believes the room should frame the spectacular views outside his window, no obstruct it with decoration. The above mentioned Hadley might not agree: “So many people arrange furniture in order to see what’s going on outside. But why? The view isn’t going anywhere.”

It brings to mind the movie cliché of the brilliant scientist who fills his closet with copies of one essential outfit. Here, the quiet, minimal approach seems also to be attempting an ambiance to save valuable brain resources like the brilliant scientist's closet. A piece in the New York Times put it this way:

"I hate design," Mr. Biesenbach will tell you emphatically. When he travels he has the habit of stripping his hotel room of anything that moves (furniture, colored pillows, desktop accessories) and stuffing it all into the closet. "It's a little bit of a curatorial disease," he said. "I like to reduce everything to its surface."

Biesenbach's closet, not unlike the scientist's:

An overview of the space including balcony garden:

After living in an mostly empty apartment, Biesenbach lent an artist friend his apartment for a summer. The friend brought in a white sofa and table and chairs. To offset the potential "clutter," one supposes, the friend painted every other remaining non-white surface white, including the TV and microwave (the TV survived the painting, the microwave didn't).

More on this story here.

Interesting how controversial the apartment is on the interwebs. Some have the called the project "anti-design." Well, if that's what it is it's hostile territory

CBS Sunday Morning spoke with Biesenbach about the apartment:

Humans first experiments with color go back to the caves. The earliest known paintings in caves can be dated to the pre-Neolithic era of 40,000 years ago in Australia and 35,000 in Europe. (The examples below are from Painted Cave in Santa Barbara, CA on the left—earliest sections thought to be 335 years ago—and Lascaux on the right—about 17,300 years ago.)

Colors used were based on whatever could be locally found—charcoal from fire and burnt bones for black, grounded calcite for white, and red and yellow from earth pigments like limonite, hemotite, red ochre, yellow ochre, and umber. Those materials were meaningful: Early painters trekked as much as 25 miles to obtain them.

Interesting to note how committed to style the cave painters were, their vernacular style remained unchanged for 22,000 years.

Forward to the Bronze Age, 1,330 B.C.E. and thereabouts, in Egypt and Greece colors were brighter if still subdued, earth tones still abound. The palette was limited but heavy on the reds and blues.

Below, a rendering of the Megaron at Pylos, Greece: Destroyed in 1,200 BCE the use of primary colors is seen in the tile work. The palette of the frescoes is still limited but the color all around is much bolder.

The Ajanta caves show the early roots of the use of striking color in India. Work on the caves occurred in a period from 100 BCE to 480 CE.

The caves reveal a long relationship of Indian culture to unsubdued color and restrained use of earth tones.

A relationship also reflected in their food.

From 600 - 900 CE tomb painting in China, heavy on the black with red accents, and Bird Man from Mexico and the Toultec who saw bold color as representative of the gods' realm.

Following the long dreary spell of the dark ages, and possibly inspired by the plague, the Renaissance brought the color back in a big way. Left, the early period of Giotto, and right, the high Renaissance of Titian.

In 1613, Jesuit mathematician Françios d'Aguilon published a definitive exploration of color theory that would be of particular interest to painters of the time (Peter Paul Rubens would provide the illustrations). He endorsed the medieval view that yellow, red, and blue were the basic or "noble" hues from which all other colors derived. He also believed that the three "noble" hues were themselves created from a mysterious blending of white and black, or light and dark so that light and dark were the two "simple" or primary colors. The "composite" hues green, orange (gold) and purple (lower curved lines) were mixed from the "noble" triad colors. Many components of this theory were inherited from Greek philosophers.

Optics and color, as was much of the knowledge of the time, was an mysterious admixture of reason, esoteric thought, and magic.

And then later, with Modernism, the rules changed again. Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1943:

Joan Miró, The Nightengale's Song at Midnight and the Morning Rain, 1940:

It seems that many folk art traditions have long understood the power of bold primaries.

An Alebrije, first imagined by Pedro Linares in the 1930s:

In its fashion, primary color swings on a pendulum that often vacillates between the bold and the black and white. Below, a House & Garden pation for the 50s; psychedelic patterns from the 60s; Bowie bulging glam in the 70s; and George Sowden's Pierre Memphis table from the 80s:

The interaction of the primaries creates an energy of its own. Theoretically, color is nothing but the bouncing of light from of a surface and into our retina.

That explains the science but says nothing about the emotional impact or psychology. Why is yellow the irritating color and why does blue calm? And what do they all say when they collaborate together?

A chair pair from Allesandro Mendini, 1978:

Manarola, Italy (and 8 other colorful places here):

Altogether, they're a circus.

In art, unlike design, the line dividing great work from the merely popular is most often drawn by our aesthetic institutions: Critics, academics, historians, and collectors—collectors, especially. After that, if a work can withstand the vagaries of the market and time then it may, at last, be something for the ages. What's conspicuously missing from this list is the public. In the final tally, they matter little.

But what if the mass market was the decider? Using reproduction numbers as a gauge, choosing a winner wouldn't be much of a contest.

On the left below, a Christ by painter Warner Sallman (that's his pic above, right) from 1940. He was once declared "the best known artist of the century" by The New York Times. His painting has been reproduced more than 500 million times to date. (During WW II alone, one printing shop kept two shifts of press laborers running on this image alone.)

On the right, La Gioconde, the best known painting in the world, Christendom and beyond, and source material for incalculable mountains of kitsch. (Leonardo's pic is above, left.)

As for critical acclaim, that's another matter. Just for argument's sake, let's say we let the pointy heads of the institution decide: In 2004 a group of 500 selected British art world professionals were asked to vote on what they thought was the most influential artwork of the 20th century. Their winner?

The inventor of conceptual art and the self-proclaimed de-deifier of the artist, Marcel Duchamp and his infamous Fountain. (You were thinking Norman Rockwell perhaps?)

Design, on the other hand, needs more than critical acclaim. It needs sales. (As Henrik Fiskar said design that isn't profitable we call art.) However the critics and taste-makers enthuse about a particular designer object, without public support it's dead as Dada. Still, there's no reason to fear a cultural takeover by bean bags and barcaloungers: While the plebeians may get the final word on pop culture, aesthetic culture is another matter entirely.

This may go a ways to explain why furniture design remains fixed in the traditional and why we can't seem to move away from mid-century. As we've discussed before, most chairs inhabiting our spaces these days have pedigrees extending back generations if not thousands of years. Prior to mid-century, the last furniture revolution coincided with the rise of industrialization and the materials it made available. Since then, the tried and true have prevailed. With few exceptions, the edgy rarely finds its way to our dinner tables or living rooms.

To wit: Phillipe Starke's Louis Ghost Chair. A streamlined dining table version of the Louis XIV warhorse reimagined in plexi.

As flexible as it is invisible.

F

Below, Starke's creation infiltrates the set of Gossip Girl.

Given the mantle of founder of American Modernism, George Nelson's designs manage to work slightly outside the sphere of the traditional form.

Below, the Coconut chair from 1955 (still available from Herman Miller): Nelson also gave us the first modular storage system and a forerunner of systems furniture.

Nelson argued that a design could push all extremes except the one that sacrifices its humanity: [A designer] must first make a radical, conscious break with all values he identifies as antihuman... total design is nothing more or less than a process of relating everything to everything." There, you see: It's easy.

Above, the Marshmallow sofa by George Nelson and Irving Harper from 1956:

Below, decorator Billy Baldwin's famous slipper chair: A crisp and prim accent chair that takes its upholstery to the floor. There's a reason for that. Baldwin believed exposed legs gave a room the appearance of restlessness. Furniture should be designed first and foremost for comfort. The Slipper was designed for short term seating, low enough to make it easy for putting on shoes, no arms for easy in and out access, and look that was sharp and plush.

Below, the Cotton Candy version currently available at Urban Outfitters (with its  un-Baldwinesque exposed legs). The legacy of the chair also continues at Target, Crate and Barrel, and Pottery Barn. The Slipper is still hot, it seems.

One of the founders of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius interprets the Chesterfield. The style, named after England's Earls of Chesterfield, goes back over 200 years and describes seating with arms and back of the same height.

A more recent reworking of the design concept in the B & B Italia Tulip chair:

The Chesterfield, the traditional and a modern reimagining:

In an earlier post we discussed Harry Bertoia's Diamond chair, a chair known for its innovative use of steel wire. Other versions would include the Bird chair with ottoman and the Café chair.

Bertoia was also a college classmate of Florence Knoll. It was Knoll who offered to manufacture Bertoia's chair. His pioneering work would bring him many laurels including an AIA Gold Medal and Designer of the Year.

Below, the Bird chair under a disguise of upholstery:

Bertoia was a multi-hyphenated sculptor, furniture designer, creator of wedding rings for Charles and Ray Eames, and college lecturer. (Bertoia also created a series of 10 Sonambient record albums based on the sounds of his wire Sounding Sculptures. See a demonstration of the sound here.) The Diamond chair has been in production since 1952.

Below, fiberglass Shell side chairs:

An important part of the mid-century style explosion was Danish Modern, a form epitomized by countrymen Arne Jacobsen (featured here), Finn Juhl (as seen here), Arne Vodder, and Arne Hovmand-Olsen. All four designers would enjoy international recognition and all owe a large debt to their forbear, Kaare Klint.

Below, Klint's Faaborg chair.

Klint's Propeller stool, owing much to the Egyptians:

While Klint and the Danish Modernists agreed with much that was going with Bauhaus, there were stark differences. The Bauhaus style stressed form and function as a singularity, minimalistic design without adornment, and industrial materials, especially steel tubing and glass. Bauhaus also represented a conscious break from Art Nouveau which had begun to fade with the beginning of the 20th century. Klint and other Danes were less inclined to let go of Nouveau's naturalistic motifs and organic forms. They preferred wood as a material and hand-crafted over the industrial as well as having design respond to the human body and its behaviors more than efficiency of industrial fabrication.

The Safari Chair from 1933:

The Safari reimagined (with a little Chinese style thrown in) from 1984 by Dutch designer Ruud-Jan Kokke:

Below, a Klint Lounger:

Bauhaus was founded in 1919 as a merger of the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art, the former directed by Belgian Henry van de Velde. Velde would also be the Bauhaus school's first director, a job he would be forced from as the nationalists rose to power in Germany. Van de Velde would choose Walter Gropius to be his successor. The change over would also bring an end to the influence of Nouveau.

Henry van de Velde's work would bridge Nouveau and Bauhaus:

The chair on the left is from a pre-Bauhaus period of 1897; On the right, Velde eschews the organic for a more industrial look:

More chairs to come in Part 4.