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"Interior Design"
The world of Architecture and Interior Design may not have many rockstars, but what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality. Peter Marino, for example. A few reasons why Mr. Marino is cooler than the rest of us:
1. His firm is called Peter Marino Architect. Just in case you don’t know what he does. Being this direct requires chutzpah. He’s got it.
2. He looks like a cross between Karl Lagerfeld, a cleaner shaven Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, and my all-time flavor fave George “I Want Your Sex” Michael.
3. He designs like a mofo.
Not only has he created breathtakingly sophisticated spaces for the likes of Ermenegildo Zegna, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, but he’s also the man behind my two all-time favorites: the Zwinger Royal Porcelain Collection at the Oriental & Meissein Animal Galleries in Dresden, Germany, and the whimsical retrospective on the work of Claude & Francois-Xavier Lalanne at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France.
Sophistication is paramount, but it’s also clear he has a well-developed sense of humour. There’s a playfulness to his work that is unparalleled.
Little surprise that he made the famed Architectural Digest Top 100 List in 2010. Needless to say, if there’s anyone to bow down to, it’s Mr. Marino. Just watch out for his spiked boots.
Not as familiar as you ought to be? Get to know his work via the gallery below.
An Interior Designer must always try to approach ordinary scenarios and dilemmas with a new perspective, always try to create new ways of looking at things, objects, people, the spaces in which we live and work. The spaces in which we exist. Observation is the critical first step, to absorb and consider.
When I came across the most recent issue of W Magazine I immediately recognized why I love the enigmatic Tilda Swinton so much: she is a human form of architecture.
In this particular comparison, the alternating black and white of her sail-like collar mimic the shadowy interior levels of the Guggenheim in Bilbao. True to form, her lichen green eyes seem to look right through you, or you through them. This ephemeral moving through space, the openness of her frame, these are the goals of great architecture.
Something has been stewing up inside of me for ages. It’s a mixed bag of frustration, pride, and down-right bitchiness:
Contrary to what you have been told by the blogosphere, there is a difference between an Interior Designer and a Decorator.
For those of you who claim to be Interior Designers, and by ‘those’ I mean the “I was once an assistant at a paint store for like, um, six months and now I have a blog and I love using words like ‘bananas’, ‘ridic’, and other assorted phrases that not only bastardize the English language but also, plainly put, sound stupid” listen up:
A professional Interior Designer is someone who went to school and received a degree in the subject. A Decorator, or Decorina as I am fond of calling them, is someone who did not, and who presumes that enjoying color play, accessorizing, and using such cutesy catch phrases as ‘I Die’ or ‘Swoon’ with respect to anything printed with a Greek Key pattern are all legitimate qualifications for design work.
Pssst, we Interior Designers would like to inform you that Kelly Wearstler’s Imperial Trellis wallpaper is, like, so, yesterday.
Frankly, I’m not sure if this vase needs flowers at all. Created from flexible resins by FISH DESIGN, the white and transparent ochre shades fuse into one another like melting wax, creating a poured quality which defies the laws of gravity, drifting upward at one point, melting downward at another. Few flowers could even compete.
I imagine Matthew Barney would have this resting on his mantel, right next to hexagonal beeswax candles and a copy of the I-Ching. If that’s not reason enough to buy it, I don’t know what is.
GET IT HERE .
Stairway to heaven?
The illustrious French fashion house Maison Martin Margiela was recently commissioned by Hotel Maison Champs-Elysées in Paris to reconceptualize the interior design of the 5-star hotel. La Maison Champs-Elysées is located on 8 Rue Jean Goujon, in a corner of Paris that boasts all the most distinguished French couture houses, making it most fitting that Maison Martin Margiela would be chosen to redefine the image of such a lavish hotel.
This was a huge undertaking for La Maison Champs-Elysées, and I really would like to sing Margiela’s praises because the result of the redesign is a luxurious universe that completely transcends time. The space allows you to leave reality behind, to forget the worldwide economic crisis that has dominated each and every newspaper, to just sit back and bask in contemporary opulence.
Maison Martin Margiela’s goal was to create “a theatrical environment where reality and trompe-l’oeil blend into a surreal atmosphere,” and it is clear the design house has more than succeeded.
Mirrors abound throughout the rooms, producing hallucinatory spaces within spaces that simultaneously entice and confuse. Intricately designed wallpaper and carpeting depicts traditional French architectural techniques, tricking the eye yet delighting the mind.
This is a building of cool paradoxes, all done in a palette of silvers, whites, greys, golds, and blacks – shades that echo royalty but truly appeal to the modern and cosmopolitan nouveau riche. The highlight of the building is a hallway completely veiled in silver leaf, alluding to the golden pavilions of Edo Japan. This passage is punctuated by a floating white diamond chandelier, and it is here we are pushed completely into the dream world, floating past the most beautiful of diamond jewelry, off to bask in the luxury of Margiela’s desirous illusions.
[A snapshot from my current project... It's little surprise that I'm a bit of a maximalist when it comes to accessories. If yesterday's Wearstler-lovin'-post didn't give me away, you simply weren't paying much attention.]
All that said, having spent nearly four years in interiors while working for a furnishings company, I wanted to impart a few, easy tips for those of you who’d like to accomplish a layered composition without all the concomitant neuroses (which, for the record, I’ve embraced because, frankly, ignoring them failed miserably).
1) Define your palette | This is the most critical step. My walls are a deep charcoal gray that I’ve lived in for nearly six years. It’s an incredibly calming color for me, and it’s also one of the most underappreciated (and underutilized) neutrals out there. From the base color, define your complementary colors. Mine, clearly, are bright white, black, and a range of soft neutrals: rust and browns.
2) Balance weight and shapes | The largest pieces in this composition are in white, a color that, while providing great contrast, is not especially imposing. Against the deeper shades here, the white almost disappears. Personally, I love a cluster of objets d’art, but they’re not necessary. Want a cleaner composition? Balance the weight of accessories with contrast, big v. small, round v. square, dark v. light, slick v. aged. The juxtaposition creates tension that brings the composition together.
3) DIY Accessories 101: PAINT THINGS | Some of the items in the above composition were quite expensive but, frankly, most were not. A good deal of my small items were sourced at run-of-the-mill thriftstores. The frame in the top right, for example, had some ghastly ‘painting’ in it that I later ripped out and simply replaced with a photograph from a magazine. The lamp? Brass relic that was five bucks. Clearly I spraypainted it after losing patience with an actual paint brush. To round it out I’m going to add a band of black grosgrain to the top and bottom of the drum shade.
I’d love to see snapshots of your own projects… and answer any DIY questions you may have. Coming from the business, I could write a tome (don’t worry, I’m not going to force that on you here… yet).
Those of you in the interior design world will undoubtedly say: KELLY, DUH. For those of you who aren’t, Wearstler is to interiors what Zoe is fashion. Ubiquitous for both her maximalist aesthetic and her minimalist frame, what I’ve found most interesting about Wearstler and her work is the dynamic juxtaposition of periods — her pure love for form, the strength of a sphere, as is her wont to say.
That isn’t to say that the work isn’t also, sometimes, visually assaulting. Her passionate outbursts manifest themselves a myriad of ways, but they’re hardly ever quiet, or clean, or simple, and for many of her detractors she is simply too in love with things, objets d’art, superfluous seating, et al. Even her commercial work (of which I’ve seen both the Palm Springs and Santa Monica Viceroys, and the BG restaurant), is incredibly, incredibly bold. No small feat when you can’t fill each and every tabletop with an orgiastic composition of color, texture, and form. Ironically enough, I’ve found these limits to show Wearstler as the consummate master: a richness of space accomplished through finishes, texture interplay, an expert but almost unstudied and most certainly unfussy colorplay, and crisp furnishings that articulate a spirit with a single, sinuous line.
In short, I love Wearstler. LOVE LOVE LOVE. Feel like getting lost for about, I don’t know, 12783913789129872 days? Check her site, and her utterly ADDICTIVE blog.
You can thank me sometime after you wipe the drool from your chin.
No, you aren’t witnessing the set-up for a lowbrow foam party. These ingenious creations are quite the opposite. Designer Asif Khan has recently fashioned machines that use three very simple components – helium, soap, and water – to create floating cloud-like structures that can be caught with fine netting to form an ethereal overhead canopy. In Khan’s eyes this cloud “experiment,” is an inquiry into the future of architecture, and it is clear this idea has boundless potential.
The canopy creates a visually entrancing diffusion of light that opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for Avant-Garde design. We’ve seen fashion that is flexible and dynamic, what happens when architecture takes this route?
As Khan says, “I believe that in the future architecture will be light, intelligent, and simple – like clouds. The Cloud experiment is about beginning that process to discover the future of architecture. Maybe we can carry a building in our pocket?” I look forward to following this gifted young designer and discovering what’s next…
This has to be one of the most innovative, and purely moving, installations I’ve seen in ages. And, frankly, I cannot imagine that the expense to produce it was exorbitant, especially by Fashion’s standards…
The Pitti-commissioned couture collection will move to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art later this year. Here’s to hoping the work has made it to the Left Coast before my trip in August. WOULD THAT I WERE SO LUCKY.
Alexander Wang announced during his resort presentation today he’ll be opening a second retail store location in Beijing. Having just opened his first store in Manhattan earlier this year he’s clearly gunning for world domination, not dissimilar from Tom Ford whose beauty line drops soon.
Perhaps there’s a cosmetics line in Wang’s future? A girl can dream…
