formal living room interior design ideas

good evening and welcome toanother of our amazing series in the rouse visitingartist program. i'm gary hilderbrandfor those of you who don't know me,professor in practice of landscape architecturehere at the school. and i'm really pleasedto be able to introduce tonight's speaker david mellon. before we ask davidto speak this evening and he's a goodstoryteller, so i

don't need to make much ofan introduction here at all. i wanted to address[inaudible] of his talk, which is here on my right. now david knows whatwe do in this school because he studiedhere in the late '90s. and from the great success ofhis los angeles-based practice and also his writings--he has a double career-- you'd have to say it waslikely that he did well here. i didn't ask his teachers,a few of whom i know.

but it's clear that helearned some things, and he took some thingsaway from the school. and maybe he'lltell us about that. but i think we canagree that aspects of design that david'sbuilt his practice on are not some of the things thatwe stress in design education here. i'm pretty sure, though, thatit wasn't that teachers forgot. so i have a littlequibble with that.

it's that the things that davidis going to talk about tonight are just hard to teach. they're not exactly part of thepedagogy of studio teaching. there are things thataccrue through practice. they are a practice--that we don't judge well on paper or on digital displays. they depend on knowledgebuilt over time. my colleague,anita berrizbeitia, chair of the department oflandscape architecture here,

calls this kind of designknowledge know-how. it's what you learn by doing. by trying things, sometimesnot getting them right, not by conceptualizing somuch or by applying theory, but by judgment andinstinct-- those are the hard things to teach. by trusting andhoning sensibilities-- we try to build thatin students here, but it's thehardest thing we do.

there's a lot of things we don'ttalk about, things for kids. we don't talk muchabout things for kids, but they are a part ofalmost every home we design. the warmth ofincandescent light-- we were joking about this onleaving a little event over at the philip johnsonhouse this evening. looking at incandescentlight and next to led light-- how we try to get thatcharacter of light through led technology, hard stuff.

hooks, pulls, fabrics-- we don'tteach that much of that here. we have a great materiallibrary downstairs, and there are some facultywho really, really pursue that but again these arehard things to teach. the warmth of wood andthe beauty of stone, or how they meet in are-entrant modernist corner or inside a traditional cove. honing versus polishing,hanging pictures-- we don't talk abouthanging pictures.

color, taste-- we don'ttalk about style much, and that's really ok with me. but we also don't talkthat much about character, and i think that is somethingwe should talk more about. we also don't talkmuch about patronage. i know about patronage becauseit's so essential in a practice like mine and like david's. and we all have repeatclients who follow us and help us to pursue our art.

it's meant a greatdeal to my practice, but we don't talk aboutthat much here either. as a landscape architect, iget the meaning in this title. as hard as we try, there arethings we can't teach well. in my field, it's hard toconvey in any meaningful way the powerful characterof seasonal change as it progresses over the year. we pay attention to it. we talk about itwith the students,

but it's really hard toteach that sensibility. the irregular ways thatunpredictable growth of plants surprise you. spacing-- we don't talkthat much about spacing. the fantastic smell ofviburnium prunifolium and why it doesn't lookgood next to a plant that has a similar leaf character. so for me knowledge in allthese things and their repeated application arehonestly the things

that bring us joy in the work. and i know thisis what david also seeks in the work,that kind of joy that you get from embeddedknowledge, from know-how. so we've asked himto come, and we're really grateful that he's here,to show us how he does that. and we look forwardto his presentation. so warm welcomefor david, please. thank you.

thank you, gary. what a nice introduction. i almost feel like i don't needto talk after you expressed so beautifully someof the concepts that i was hoping we'dgo over in this talk. i think that in speakingof incandescent lights and the warmth, iwould love it if we could dim some of the lightsin here for your sake. i mean we'll get through it.

but it feels like anairplane as it is, anyway but the lighting is-- ah,now this is getting intimate. so my name's david netto. i'm an interior designer. i did attend the gsdfor more than two years and elected not tocontinue to get my degree, because i knew that iwanted to design houses and not really topractice architecture. and i felt very embarrassedabout that decision

at the time. sylvette was my advisor. you know i had greatsupport within the faculty from people like scott cohen,who's here tonight, who tutored me in descriptive geometryin a booth at the hong kong restaurant. i mean peoplecouldn't understand why i wanted to leave. but i left to start my practice,and i've been in it ever since.

and tonight i'm going toshow you some of the ways that i approach designthat i did actually learn to implement from my time here. my education at thegsd was very valuable, and i still do use it. and some of the waysthat i never found anybody here talking about,which are atmospheric and have to do withthe character of more ephemeral stuff than theplastic art of architecture.

and in talking abouthow to introduce the idea of interior design asa different kind of discipline than architectural design, i ofcourse begin with this image. that was a joke. but there's a messagein this that i'm going to unpack for you. i love this car. many people agree that thisis one of the great moments of automotive design.

it's a bugatti from 1936called the atlantic coupe. and why is this car sovenerated and why is its design so sensual and successful? and the reason forthat to me is the story of the conception of theprototype and the built example that we see here. when bugatti was building alight weight alloy material into the prototype,which was something that was used inaircraft manufacturing,

it containedmagnesium-- it could not be welded, becausethe metal actually would combust and catch fire. so they had to rivetthe seams together and that's how we get thatdorsal spine and the smaller version on the tail fin. and then everybody likedthat handmade industrial sort of honest aspect ofit with the rivets so much, that when theymanufactured the three

examples of this car thatthey did build in aluminum, they kept that constructiontechnique visible, even though they didn'tneed to use it anymore and they could have welded. and to me that's sort ofwhat i'm after in decoration. you always want a reasonfor doing something, but you're lookingfor the thing that isn't necessarily the logicalor necessary move that brings, that lifts a project.

this is a house in los angelesby richard neutra from 1961 called the ohara house. it's one of the mostbeautiful of the small neutras in the neutra colony, whichis a group of nine houses that he built on land thathe would only sell you if you hired him to be the architect. and this is one of juliusshulman's most famous photographs from the early'60s of a neutra with the ohara children in the left.

and it shows you thatthe living room is really the balcony and the waythat these houses were meant to be lived in was toindulge the fantasy, at least in california, thatyou could be living outdoors. this is also my house. i bought this house insilver lake 13 years ago. and the received way ofliving in a neutra house was like julius shulmanshows in the photographs. i find this decorationa little tentative

and not really thoughtthrough at all. but this is what nakedneutra architecture looks like when originally conceived. this is a picture ofthe house recently, and i wanted to see what i coulddo to add to the narrative. you know it'sintimidating to step into that architectural legacyand think-- what are you going to add to this? but i am interestedin challenges.

and so rather than make itlook like restored like a car, like the shulmanphotographs, i put things like these austrian 1920sbarrel-backed chairs that you can see alittle bit there. i put a curtain on theoutside of the balcony to sort of claim thatwhite enamel floor space more convincingly asthe living on the inside. and i put the mostorganic and sensual, sort of reminiscent of mirosculpture inside this rigid box

to try to dissolve thesharp angles of it. there's mies. there's poul kjaerholm. and these kjaerholmchairs are a bit of scandinavian meeting theamerican modernism of neutra that i actually have notseen anyone do before. and the results i think aresuccessful, not necessarily for a purist. but here's a photographby mario testino

of dakota johnson, the actress,in the house that was in vogue. and of all the placesthat they could have chosen whenthey were looking for a modernist backdropfor this photo shoot, they did not choosea correct house. they chose a house thathad actually decoration that was an intervention to it. so i don't know. i find that i put this picturein here also to show you

that i love putting a littleamerican thing-- that's a red sean givens coffeetable-- in the context of an american city. i think it's also importantto subliminally refer to the context in whichyou are designing. this is a design here of minei want to share with you. because i want to showyou things tonight that are not common knowledge,and maybe, hopefully not, familiar images.

this is the maharaja of indore. and he was a great dandyand a great connoisseur in the '20s in sort of middlewestern, west central india. he went to paris, as many ofthese indian rajput titles did. and there wore westerndress and became infatuated with the modernismthat he found in paris. he bought three birds in spacesculptures from brancusi, went straight to his studio. he visited eileen grayand eckhart muthesias.

this is his palace in indorebefore the lasers-- not really, i think we might havelost the battery here. but before is below. above is after his renovations. and you can see that hewas interested in looking at corbusier and thestreamlining movement that he found in europe. he was one of the earlypurchasers of the eileen gray transat chair, which wesee in his own bedroom

at the palace on the upper left. and that is the actualoriginal transat chair from that room, which sold atphillips for over a million dollars. i'm embarrassed atthe mention of money, but it does come up as away to sort of validate the importance oficonic design pieces as they continue theirtravels through time and become more collectible.

but this also shows youhow that piece of furniture was sort of used as an object. the room was designedas an environment and the chair wasdropped into it. and later we're going to seeeileen gray's own apartment, and show how she maybe cameat it a little differently. this is that same roomwithout a decorator. lest you think you cando it without help. it's later.

it's after independence. the palace is notcurated anymore. but it's still a roomthat's being used. you can see thebed canopies there, the light fixtures are there. and there's some decentmodernist furniture. but i just had to include thispicture because it shows what happens when you get sloppy. is that a laser?

oh, it's a real laser. this is eileen gray's own villatitled, sort of romantically, e-1027 in the south offrance near cap-ferrat. and she built it for herself. and there is her transat chair. and i'm fascinated bythe effect of this house on le corbusier, who was reallybasically obsessed with it, tried to buy it,and became, i think, unable to accept that a womancould design modernism that

sort of exceededanything he felt he had done in a house at that time. and corbusier later paintedmurals on this white headboard and in several otherplaces to the fury of eileen gray, who felt that hehad then vandalized the house. but it was his way oflaying claim to her creation when he couldn't buy it. but i think that thechair in this context shows that thefurniture came first.

and eileen gray was primarilya furniture designer. this is one of her only worksof architecture and certainly the first. and it shows theuse of space sort of being devised as a diagram. that's called themichelin man chair, and that's the transat chair. and the rugs justfall where they are. but you know, shemakes a diagram

of how she's goingto use the room and the architecture fallsinto place around it. this is le corbusierwith his mural, kind of her impression of him. i put this picturein this morning because i came across it onthe train on the way up here. and it shows-- it's not reallyabout interior design, is it? it's about an attitude. but it's a way ofa man occupying

space maybe versus a womanoccupying space, which relates to some politicalthemes that we've all been following lately. interior designand architecture-- i thought i'd have a roomful ofarchitecture students tonight. so i wanted to show asection-- there are some, but also many practicingarchitects and graduates. welcome. i wanted to show someexamples of how architecture

and interior design can bothbe conflated and intermingled to the point where you cannotidentify where one begins and the other leaves off, andthen in ways where that's less true. but this is one ofthe ways where that's most holistically true for me. this is alvar aalto'svilla mairea in finland, and it's modernism like we justwere looking at at the philip johnson thesis house.

it's very handmade. it's very sensual. and in scandinavia,they have a funny way of incorporating themost traditional sort of natural materials likewicker, wrapping these columns and sort of humanizingthe modernism, even though this is avery futuristic house. but the supportsystem of the stairs, the columns beingpared unnecessarily,

then wrapped withwicker unnecessarily. you know-- whereis the decoration and where is the architecture? and this is a very blurredrelationship between those two. i sometimes think ofshaker houses and furniture as the first modernism. and i've never been ina shaker 18th century room that didn't feel complete. and even though maybethere were no contents,

it was the first minimalism. certainly i think johnpawson is always thinking about these kinds of rooms. but here are two shakerrooms in pennsylvania that show the possibilitiesof designing in a minimal way and not really decorating atall, because the brooms are there for utilityand not ornament. but accomplishing aresult that feels like you wouldn't be unhappyin the space.

this is a room by a graduateof the gsd, lee mindel, from the architecture firmshelton mindel in new york. this is-- i call itan architecture firm, but lee would describe himselfas an interior designer as much as an architect. and this is someone i've learneda lot about curating furniture from in modern spaces. lee designs in a waythat is very focused on scandinavian design, butnot in the familiar '50s sense.

he's going into alevel of deep knowledge about scandinavian stuffthat includes more jacobsen and that sort of designwithin reach stuff. this is a chair byfinn juhl, and i always ask people to guessthe date of that chair. and everyone says 1955 orsomething like-- it's 1936. so it comes from the samesensual moment as that alvar aalto house that we just saw. and lee's ownapartment in new york

is a place wherehe's experimented with a lot of this contentsversus architectural shell. and that is a gaudi chair,called the siamese chair. we can't really seethat it's two seats, but it is, and inthe background, a fornasetti screen. and he createdthis rotunda which is sort of meant to mimic thewatertower typology of new york loft buildings andthe stairs go up

to something but from theoutside references a water tower, but is made of glass. and then he changeswhat goes into here. you know gaudi is early20th century modernism, but he movesindustrial furniture into that he works withpieces by marc newson and '50s scandinavian stuff next to that. the combinations that leemindel pursues in architecture that he conceivesof himself also

is something that's taughtme a lot about a very calm potential future fora lot of these pieces that is not just the familiarway that we know them. i mean i think he's, in a way,given a second life to some of this furniture. this is an apartment in newyork in a building from 1930 that i put in here becauseit's georgian, neo-georgian apartment house architecture. and lee mindel is stillfurnishing it like-- well,

it's a bit more jazzy andflamboyant than the stuff that we just saw. but he's reduced pediments,moldings, and neutralized the background context. and here he'screated point of view by contrast, rather thanharmony, which the first three slides were more about. this is maybe a buildingthat not so many people know by philip johnson.

i don't think i knewit until i started to write about architecturalhistory for the wall street journal, and i waslooking for stories to pitch of things that weren'tthe stuff that everybody already knew. and i came across thisbuilding by philip johnson in dumbarton oaks. it's the pre-columbianart pavilion. and it just dumbfoundedme, because it

was so unlike anythingelse he ever did. and it's based onthe circulation around an open courtyard,which the drawing doesn't describe very well, butthat center circle is open to the sky. there's a fountain. so we, in this viewfrom the story, are actually lookingthrough that access. and in each of these littlebays is a vitrine containing

pieces of pre-columbian art. and i thought aboutphilip johnson tonight and starting our eveningin the thesis house. and i thought about what arethe buildings that he really tested himself as asort of sensual designer and not the industrialdesigner that based on the vocabulary ofmies that we know him as. and this one came tomind as one that's one of the most successfuland consequently unique,

has no progeny. come back with meto la for a moment. this is richard neutra,rather severe character, and the roof of his ownhouse, the vdl research house in silver lake. and you could see my housein the bushes somewhere, you know they wereall near each other. and neutra was very rigorous,very authoritative, and used to take all the furnitureout of his house

when he had juliusshulman photograph them. and then would surpriseclients by visiting them years later just to check in on thingsand see how they had maintained the interiors, which i don'tthink many people enjoyed. but there was nosaying no to neutra. and one thinks ofhim, like mies, as a real sort oftough stonewaller. but the closer you look at thevdl research house and the more you sort of look at thepriorities of richard neutra's

design, i find that he is a moresensual designer than we first give him credit for. this entire wallof that back room is mirror, which isdesigned to reflect, we can make it out inthere just a little bit, the double view of silver lakereservoir and double the light. and this is not something--this is like decoration. i mean it's something aninterior designer would try to come and do afterwardsif it wasn't that way already.

but neutra was notafraid of those kind of sensual touches amidstall the rigor of his plane architecture. here's my house, lookingtoward silver lake, there's a little water there. and i brought thislight to show you that the compositionof the building is pavilion steppingdown a hill. but that the mainmessage of this picture

is that the promise of thehouse that you are actually going to be in the livingroom, but outdoors, is something that really isonly fulfilled by furniture. so if an architect feelsthat they can deliver that without somebody sort of closingthe deal with how the furniture plan makes it come true, i thinkthat's sort of a long shot. and i thought aboutwhat neutra intended. i thought about whati could add to it. and one of the things i diddo was furnish this back patio

like the real living room. jumping centuries, becausethe degree i did get was in architecturalhistory from columbia before i dropped out of harvard. this is syon house,a big english country house by robert adam, whichis a renovation of an existing earlier sort ofcastellated building in the neoclassical style. and adam, in 1760s is highlyobsessed with symmetry.

so he's looking tocreate a square room, like a roman colonnadewith complete symmetry inside a space, whichbecause of the older dimensions of the castlethat he's working in, is actually a rectangle. and the windows areoff-center, and then you have to deal with the stairtower and all of that. and he does that by sortof inventing a column screen, which is the third--it's two rooms within the room.

it's the real room,which is rectilinear. and it's the fictionalroom, invented by adam, which is the square within that. and i really thoughtabout this room when i first saw how itbehaved the first time in plan. and i thought, whatcan i learn from that? and one of the things thati've done that i think is sort of an applicationof that formula in a modern context is,when i find a room that's

too small-- the whole room wasnot including the soffit, which i created-- i sometimes chop itinto bits and i have a third, as the fictional soffit andveneered alcove, and 2/3 as the space in the roomthat you actually use. but if you didn't doall of that and dropped the soffit andchanged materials, you would just think, oh,i'm in a bedroom that's smaller than i wish it was. and this way you've distractedby the use of finishes

from a fundamentalspatial disadvantage. and if you saw thosetwo images together and i wasn'texplaining it, you'd know all of that right,the adam and veneered wall? i was worried about dwellingtoo much in opulence. and so i brought a pictureof one of my favorite rooms, which is louis armstrong'skitchen in his house in corona, queens, which is a museumnow and you can visit it. it's one of the greatsecret museums of new york.

i think this room has everyounce of the potential to make happiness andthe sophistication and boldness ofpalate that we often associate with much moresophisticated designers and users. louis armstrong had boldtastes, but really there was no outshininghis own character. and so the potentialof a room to be a portrait of itsoccupant is something

that i'm pursuing as adesigner all the time. this was a gift tohis wife lucille, but i come back to thisroom again and again. and i think if we didn'thave a lot of money, and if we had a tiny space andif the only thing we could do was buy a compact stove,and what can we deploy? the answer in this caseis color and the sort of sophisticated zone of whitesliding formica doors there. and you know, the intimacyof scale is forgotten.

i like to play thingsnot up the middle, and i only show oppositesnext to each other. so as a completejump in scale-- this is one of the mostsuccessful rooms i think in america, whichis the seattle public library by rem koolhaas, whichhas its origins in the gsd. rem was teaching here, and joshramos, who was a student here when i was here,was the person who made him aware of thecompetition for this,

which obviously he won. and delivered one of the greatmodern buildings in america. i think this roomis successful way beyond just the remarchitectural you know, web-like glass shell. and the way the bookshelvesbehave and the furniture plan is designed is a bigpart of why it really is the living room of seattle. and so i like this, inthe atmosphere and use

phase of our evening, to showyou that that kind of modernism can be a happymaking place, too. ruthie and richard rogers cameto speak at the gsd this fall, i've heard. and i'm sure they were inpiper, but being a decorator, we're going to make stubbinsinto the piper it never was. this is the river cafeby richard rogers. it's ruthie rogers'restaurant, and for all i know she showedit to you already.

but i just had dinner init in london last week. and now that pizzaoven stove in the back is painted bright red-- whichis a very richard rogers thing to do-- and so is the pipe. and this is a room where it'sknown for its atmosphere. everybody wants to bethere, and yet, you know, this is a sort of ferocious,groundbreaking, modernist character who created it. why is he able to conjuresuch a sunny atmosphere?

and i think the answeris because of the colors and because of thelighting techniques. this hut is actually oneof my favorite buildings to talk about. i think it's one of themost telling buildings to talk about and sophisticatedbuildings to talk about. it's le corbusier's only househe ever built for himself, called le cabanon, andit's on the same property almost as the eileen grayvilla that we looked at before.

he didn't get to buythe eileen gray house. he later, 20 years lateralmost built this small house for himself, which is one room. and did not have akitchen because he was close enough to theowners, the proprietors of the restaurantl'etoile de mer next door that they tookall their meals there. but in the axonometricdrawing you see that this guy, who we knowfor ronchamp, for the carpenter

center right here, forthese huge sculptural sort of brutalist creations--when it came time to make his ownenvironment, made it something extremely intimateand sensual and specifically wooden, by choice. the only furniture init are these two crates, which were based on winecrates, but they aren't-- i mean their interpretations of that. and i think it's aninteresting thing

to compare with what i wastrying to say about the eileen gray house, becauselike that, it's clear that the diagram forthis room came first and the placement of the windowsand the sort of elevation aspect of the facade fellinto place after that. so it's a buildingconceived abstractly and diagrammatically,a little like eisenman, and then given its visualidentity afterwards. one day in 1965, le corbusier--he was an obsessive swimmer--

took his daily swim andswam off into the bay and never came back. i think that travel isvery important for anybody interested in design,both because you never know what you're goingto find and because you have to get used toremembering that it takes work to know what's out there. you don't really feelthings from looking at it on a computer.

i went to swedenlast march and april, and my daughter, who'snine at the time, is actually the personwho got this idea. i went to the tree hotelwith her, at her suggestion. and the tree hotelis a sort of drop out-- i mean not really offthe grid-- but you know, it's a zany place. and it's in lower laplandand the proprietor has bought a 1930sswedish nursing home

and then built six roomsthat have a theme-- this is the bird's nest. oh, and there's aufo and other things. and he is really a patron ofimportant modern architecture on a very miniature scale. and i want to writeabout this guy. i don't know how i'mgoing to do that. but some of the most excitingcontemporary architecture that i have found isat this hotel in lulea,

this is about an houraway, where facebook has a huge server plant. and i asked why that is. i thought maybe they wanted theswedish workforce-- exactly-- and i love that answer becauseit seems so environmentally optimistic. they don't needto cool the rooms. it's colder theremany months a year than it would be inanother part of the world.

these are my children asleepinside the bird's nest, and when you're in it-- imean a picture is very hard to take in this--the light source, hid behind a sort ofmetal valence, is a very important reasonfor why this building is so sensual and successful. if you just put a lamp init or recessed lights when you were up there, itwould not feel the way that concealed sourceof light makes you feel,

like you're on a boat. and this is anotherroom at the tree hotel. this is called theglass, the mirror cube. and you can onlysee it as anything but mirror at night whenthe lights are on inside. i didn't get tostay in this one. i've seen this pictureall over this school, and i thought it was aterrible thing to do to me. because i thought i wasracking my brain, thinking i've

got to bring allthese modern things to show the kidsthat i understand what they're interested in. and then out comes the mostsort of edwardian, orientalist, 19th century thing thati think i've ever done. but here it is, so ithought i'd just own it. this is an apartment i did a fewyears ago in new york downtown for someone who was veryinterested in russian history and aesthetics, andher husband is iranian.

so the tiles onthe fireplace there are faux-painted persian tiles. and the color palettewith the strong reds and the embroideredcurtains is meant to evoke you know chekov, whichis what she was looking for. and the reason that the redis so important in conveying a russian identity is thatthere was a huge textile industry in russia inthe 19th century and up until the revolution in kiev.

and it produced these redquilts and embroidered cloths that we think of asrussian peasant dress components and sovietflag red and so forth. but why was that color there? the answer is in the centuriesbefore, the trade route from afghanistan had involvedthe scraps of british soldiers' red coats. and they made their way to kievthrough khyber pass and all of that, and thenwere incorporated

into patchwork textiles. so that's a littlerationalism behind that room, and how you conjureatmosphere when you know things about history. this is a modern project ofmine, just finished this summer on long island. and you know it's a rigid box. i worked with an architect whodoes this and doesn't really like to do anything to itexcept keep it as white and as

empty as possible. and we clashed frequentlyover my attempts to introduce exotic things andorganic shapes into the box. so you can come toyour own conclusions about how successful that was,but the client is very happy. and the way that i thoughtwe wanted to take that on was furniture by wendellcastle like that, as many roundshapes as possible. that's the mini wendell castle.

there are two sizesof that table. organic sculpture and thesort of manipulation of scale by using these enormousnyhavn pendants that are supposed to be outsidein the kitchen, which the architect hada heart attack, you know, and insistedi made a mistake. and they needed to besmaller and the canopy was 11 inches wide,and blah, blah, blah. but i think it wasthe right move.

and that boat hangingin there we actually had to make, becausea real rowing shell was like 17 feet long. and we had to make a 2/3scale version of it that would actually fit in the house. anyway, this is myattempt to animate an orthodox modern white boxwith beautiful wood finishes. but very much about theplainness of modernism. this is the bedroom,the master bedroom

in that house which had thesame problem as the bedroom with the soffit andthe veneered alcove. and the room is too small. we gave all the floor platejuice to the living room. so the first attemptto resolve that was to make this dressingroom a sort of cube object, and that became a color,and then it became veneered. and then i thought,well, you know what-- why don't we grow thatwall up on the outside wall

where we actually didn'tthink we needed it, and it'll become the headboard. and so it will be as ifwe started with that, and then the headboardgrew out and unfolded like a piece of veneerorigami, and is now three planes of the room. the other side of the room,the view from that point is just a white wall. and you don't rememberthat this room is not

as big as you wish it was. the view helps, butalso the introduction of some 18th centuryfurniture, which is totally unexpected inthis architecture also helps. two devices thati have found are something you canuse to lift things is to repeat outsidewhat you just did inside. so the outdoor showeris in the same layout as the interior bathroom shower.

and this sense ofdoubling again, but in a differentexternal context, is just the successfulway to design things in a way that implies thatyou've really added something that wasn't there before. sectional diversityis another way. you can unfold ahouse if you provide one slice, a view vertically,in a house that's very much about horizontal views.

these are some glimpsesof the inside that show some of my favoriteobjects to include in this kind ofwhite box modernism. there's a charlotte perrianden chaise, tokyo chaise, the sculpture that you sawfrom a distance before, and then this artprint that used to belong to louise nevelson. i'm always trying to put sensualshapes in sharp-edged boxes. another real pain in the ass totry to make young or relevant

is tudor and elizabethanarchitecture. and this is a housein los angeles, which was from the '20s and in astyle that is unkindly referred to a stockbroker tudor. and you know it's really hardto not end up with rebecca. and i took it on as a challenge. that we're just going tohave to figure this out. because these peoplecould not be in there as elizabethan characters.

so the furniture plan issurprising for the room. these two chaiselongues facing a sofa. the screen behindthem, which conceals a sort of modern alcove that hasfurniture based on dupre-lafon, and a table fromdesign within reach that's a copy of a[inaudible] table. but here is another one of thosechairs from 1936 by finn juhl. it's a pair. this is not an expensiveroom to furnish.

it looks like it wouldbe, but the main mission was to whiten itand brighten it. and then distract youwith so many components from different erasthan the architecture that you didn't really rememberthat you were in a leaded glass tower of london environment. and one thing that's probablynot noticeable that i think means a lot is i took outthe linen fold paneling which you see here, which wascontinuous across the fireplace

and made that sort of paintedempty zone above the fireplace to hold the painting. this is another roomin that same house, and this room is tiny. i like to paint a ceilingdark in a tiny room. and then i had theproblem of it getting very depressing in therebetween the dark brown ceiling and the old masterpainting that we liberated from a heavy baroque frame.

so this painted stripewas the solution to that, which is sortof a mexican jail detail, but in a very elegantroom from the top down, i think it's successful. but people forget aboutthe potential for ceilings. it's actually thebiggest wall in the room. some designer once saidthat and i never forgot it. this is a house in long island,which was an interesting design challenge because it wasa hexagon from 1980s.

it was a collectionof hexagons on stilts. it's a post-renovation,the facade was completely reinventedwith new casement windows and so forth. but what i really want totalk about is the plan. and this shows the cad plan ofthe house as it is finished. and this shows me workingout the furniture plan to try to animatethese extremely sort of bizarregeometries of these rooms

and find a way to reinvent them. the pie-wedged shapes ofthese three smaller bedrooms were actually the waythe living room was, too. there was a kitchen,like a pie-wedge. this system of dividingup the hexagons, it happened again and again. so i cleared that out andmade it empty and tried to create an access withthe stuff arranged according to the fireplace, butlengthwise that way.

there is a tv room and study. there is a living room. there is a very strangely shapedsofa that goes in this tv room. and then there'sa top floor, which is like a lighthouse,which doesn't have any divisions at allbecause we took them all out. and that's the master bedroom. this is the living room. and if you can imagine thatthat column was concealed

in the sheet rock ofthe kitchen pie wedge, and we never knew about it. and then it was, ofcourse, rusty and a mess when we exposed it. so i painted itblue and wrapped it in rope, sort of remembering thevilla mairea in a long island vocabulary. this is the upstairssitting room. and i thought,you know, if we're

going to be decadent andtake out all the walls and it's really likea sort of spa room, why don't we movethe bathtub out of the bathroom, where itwas originally in the plan, past this partition, andput it in the bedroom. make it really participatein the bedroom. and you can be inthe bathroom looking at the ocean from there. one of the ways that you wantto cue people how to use a place

is color. and when you encounter confusingcul de sacs or a multiplicity of doors, and you don'tknow how to tell people where they shouldgo, that's actually a great way of sayingthis is one child's room. this is a guest room. this is another child's room. here's that sofa inthe tv room office. i really do-- it seemsquite inevitable to me now.

but i don't know whatelse we would have done in here to furnish this room. the architecture was sobizarre that it actually took a decorator to fix it. this is a wonderfulobject, which is one of the prototypes of theoriginal jacobsen ant chair, bought at auction in sweden. and it has all of the sortof patina and crustiness of handmade nature ofmodernism that i've always

loved and pursued in my design. back to californiafor a moment-- this is the neutra housewhen i found it, ok? it had been restored quite wellby a contractor and a neutra fetishist. and it was completely whiteand sort of mostly empty and looked not likeany family was ever going to be living in it. but proudly takingpictures of it,

that was what went on in there. so the house is builtaround a tree, which is a wonderful beginning for it. and the color of thewhite lineolum floor was the first place i thought icould attack this issue of what am i going to add to it. so i changed the floor tothis rich, darker blue, which was a great contrastwith the caramel of the wood and that corbusier sofain caramel leather.

this is anotherway of showing you how i like to workwith context and work with the strengths of anarchitectural situation, but i also don't liketo accept just anything. this firebox openingthe dimensions of it in this victorianapartment in new york was extremely uptightand measly, i thought. so i designed a mantle thatignored the dimensions of that and is giving theoptical impression

that the fireplace is somethingmuch bigger than it is. and this is a brushedstainless steel insert so that we don't feel likewe're completely period louis the xvi. and it keeps it a little young. another architectural fictionfrom a project of mine was the beam system inthis penthouse ceiling, living room ceiling. the idea of a penthouse is thatit's a house in the sky, right?

so the country farmhouseaspect of it was delivered. it was the terraces,and you can see green in the city, which isan incredible luxury. but the architecture didn'tfollow through on any of that. so i introduced thesebeams that are lined oak, and they're also a great wayto make the ceiling lights be less obvious. this is a headboard. it's an upholstered wallin a tiny, tiny, tiny room.

but instead of makinga bed with a headboard, i made the whole wall theheadboard and the softness of that doubles assort of proscenium into the fantasy of thisswedish josef frank fabric. this is a very interestingroom to me, but very subtle. and i hope you getit and like it, because it cost a lot of money. this is a house in nashvillefor great clients of mine. and we were trying to restorean important georgian house

by charles platt from 1910. and it was just getting alittle old ladyish sometimes, a little correct. the architect wasobsessed with platt. he's someone i work with a lot. and american classicismis a wonderful thing, but these wereyoung clients and i wanted to do something alittle bizarre amidst all of the correct stuff.

and so this paneled roomthat the architect designed, i suggested we dohand gouged oak in all of the flat surfaces ofit instead of just flat veneer. and i got that idea fromjean-michel frank's llao llao hotel in patagonia. if you look at theseclosely enough, you can see thatthe hand gouged oak is in all of thearchitectural-- he gets that device from africanfurniture, certain furniture

in mali that he used firstto make a cabinet out of, and then there was thisfull architectural envelope. but that room, whenwe were making it-- and there was only oneperson who i could ever find who could makeit in new york, a french craftsman--the flat panel started to split when weonly carved one side of it. and the wood would crack. and so the guy who did ithad to carve both sides, even

the invisiblebackside to keep it from splitting-- so it's twicethe work that it looks like. here are two of those chairsin another project of mine from the hotel that originallywere covered in antelope skin. but i love frank and i wasfortunate to get these funded. and this is a big living roomin a house on long island that i did recentlythat was published in architectural digest. i did a lot to this room.

i'm not sure that i'mable to explain it just from this image,but i will tell you that the fireplace is set intoa venetian plaster chimney press wall. i wanted there to bea large, strange sort of totemic object, amysterious intervention in all of this hamptons' wood. and the wall wraps the cornerand goes into the dining room. so there's no conventionaldoor with a casing there.

you know you're moving aroundthis like a big richard serra sculpture. it's much darker than it appearsin this picture all the time. so that's myattempt to introduce something modern andstrange to this beach house. i have a few copies, ifanybody wants to see it, of my new book, which i'vejust come out october 25th on a french designer calledfrancois catroux, much more talented than me, didn'tneed any school at all.

he was invited tonight,didn't come up. but catroux is now going toturn 80 years old in december. and one of the thingsthat fascinated me, knowing what idid about his work from following it inmagazines, was its range. this is his first project from1968, which is a amphitheater fashion show room. i mean the seats areto watch a fashion show for mila schon in milan.

and he had nevertrained or worked for any designer or architect. and through a societyintroduction, the woman i guess took a shine to him, andsaid, would you do this palazzo that i want to be modern. and he'd locked himself in ahotel room for three months and did this project. his own apartment, whichcame out soon after that and was much photographedin 1971 in paris

had-- this is themila schon reception part of the showroomon the left, and this is catroux'sown apartment in paris from the early '70s. it has these undulatingbanquettes on the walls, and plants are themain furniture, and i didn't really knowhow to describe this. i mean it's verygroovy and cool. and we know that it exemplifiesthat stanley kubrick 2001 era.

but he came, when we were doingthe captions, and said to me, i remember why i did this. it was the late '60s,'68, '70 in paris. and everybody wasagainst everything. this was the time ofthe student riots. and without realizing it. i was against everything, too. against furniture, againstobjects, against bourgeoisie. so you know instead of acoffee table, we have a cube.

instead of a sofa, a cushion,and no commodes, only volumes and art. and so that explained anddecoded this room for me. catroux is much moreinnovative than he's been given credit for. and this is the stainlesssteel fireplace mantle that is the first timethat that kind of modernism was combined withan 18th century object on the cover ofthis book from 1974.

his mid-career work is--here's the range, right? remember i said there was range? this is probably 1983. it's his own diningroom in paris. and it's a very rigorouslyhistorical evocation of the percier andfontaine drapery at malmaison for thewalls, lots of mahogany french 18th-century furniture. and yet he's got atoe in his times,

because this carpet iscompletely memphis post-modern. it's a wall towall carpet that's illusionisticoctagons of marble. this is a later, i think2000 or 2003 room in paris by him where he'sstill using antiques, but somehow we end up with amodern room, a younger room than let's say in anantiques-filled room. and when you lookat it, you realize it's because of the palette.

you know he's taken out therich colors that we associate with the 18th century andthese shapes and boulle, like the desk in louis xv. and no dark greens and ruby red. it's all bone and beige,working its way up to white. but the real thing thatexplains the point of view about this roomis when, you know, he said, they weregreat collectors and they had a greatcollection of carpets

as well as everything else. but we didn't use any of them. i said i wantedto use straw rugs, because the roomwould just become too heavy and opulent if we hadthat furniture and renaissance objects, and thenalso fancy carpets. so the rugs are all straw. this is catroux's own apartment. when i went see himin paris, i thought

i was going to see somethinglike the dining room, you know, full of mahogany. and this is the wayhe's living now. he's gone back tobeing young again. he's gone back to the '60s. and so the modernismof this ron arad desk and the sort of diagonalityof the furniture plan is what he's interestedin pursuing now. this is anotherview of that room.

i'm going to closewith a couple of images of a very recent projectof his in california, which is a house that is inspiredby frank lloyd wright, which is sort of obvious, ithink, from these pictures. but i actuallyfind it interesting that the only comp is, inmy mind, the house of james mason in north bynorthwest, which is a creation byhitchcock, you know, of matte painting and the set.

the furniture inside the franklloyd wright-based gesture of field stonewalls is european. this chair by royere is coveredwith chamois goat chin hair. and this is a vladimir kagansofa and royere polar bear sofa. but in a nod to america,because this is los angeles, we have two nakashima chairsand with the innocence of american wood,made in pennsylvania. the undulating carpetsand the amoeba-shaped sort

of furniture groupsis something that i think he uses to relievethe strong orthagonal lines of the architecture. and i asked him about the tree. you know, was ityour idea to make the tree such a prominentfeature in the living room? and he said yes. there was a windowaround the tree, but it was touching the house.

and the window was alldivided panes of small lights. and he wanted to makeit really invited in to participate in the room. and i thought where havei heard that before? you know, it's my ownhouse with the neutra tree that was the first gesture ofthe composition of that house was building the pergolaaround the existing tree. and so without knowing thatthat was a really california gesture in theneutra canon, catroux

came and thoughtup the same thing himself and sort of putthis tree in a terrarium, but you feel like you'rein the room with it. i didn't want to end withsomebody else's work. so here's me. we're going to diewith our boots on. that's the nature of thejob, architects, too. and i'm presenting in londonlast week to a client. it shows the mess that i have tocarry with me for these things.

it shows the diversityof furniture and samples and elevations that i rentare on top of cad drawings to show shadows in atmospheresand carpet samples back there. but what i think it really showsand why i brought it to end on is that you have to take themwhere you want to take them. you have to always betrying to tell them a story. and i'm on my feet, notputting a piece of fabric in someone's hands,but trying to tell them the story of this house.

and i hope i haven'tbored you with my story, but that's what i got. so thank you so much. i was told to put aside atime to entertain questions, but michael phillips isfleeing without a question. if anybody has a question,i'm happy to talk. shoot. the gentleman, front row. yes.

kerry ellen. i'm a fellow fromthe hutchins center. wow. so a couple of things. and you kind of ended rightwhere i wanted to start. that is, i think if you're notfamiliar with interior design or interior designers,your vision of them might be the ones you see inthe movies of, you know, the-- frank?

yeah, yeah, exactly. walking around with his armscrossed and pointing out how horrible everything is. they're out there. i guess. and i was really curiousif you could just talk about how yousource the things that you're going to use,whether it be chaises or lamps. are you walking aroundwith images in your head

or in your laptopor on your tablet? how do you actuallydo the work of saying this is going to go there? is it from your knowledgeof these materials? how do you become aware ofthings that are coming out? what's your catalog whenyou're working with a space? and then the secondquestion is if you could talk as to why you thinkit is that interior design or design, as thesesubjects are exploding,

is not taught here at harvard? that is an explosivesecond question. the answer to yourfirst question is i find that if youknow your business, you know exactly what youwant to do for a house and for a client. even more so than youmay be wanting to let on. because it doesn't look likeyou've listened sometimes if you just immediately,if you knew that fast,

and you didn't look at myportfolio clippings of images. then you didn't ask me what myfavorite color was or whatever. but the main part of this jobthat's important is confidence. you have to have the competenceto get into character and invent the story historyfor something that-- you have to invent thisstuff for people. so whether they may becompletely aware of that or not, you know immediately--if you know your business-- what you want to do.

and you have a vocabularyof sofas and shapes and rooms in your headthat this refers to, that i've beenauto-piloting, collecting in my head for years. how do you know what's new issomething that the internet has helped with immeasurably. and the way theinternet has not helped with doing interior designis that now everybody knows the price of everythingor they think that they

can do better than you. and they think they'regoing to tell you what they want before you tellthem, which is a big no no to lose control like that. but the advantageof the internet is that you really can look upwhat's happening at the milan furniture fair. you can find out that certainthings like those wine crates in corbu's cabanonhave been reissued by cassina

for $600, whatever, you know. but that's harder. keeping hip to what's new andcoming out there is harder. well, that's what i meantby travel is so important. i don't think iever learned as much as when i get outof the building and pound the pavement. you walk around and go shopping. and then you go to europe andyou see what's happening there.

you're never going to learn thatin your office on the internet. why is interior design nottaught at the gsd at harvard? i think that architecturehas traditionally looked down on this discipline assomething insufficiently rigorous and intellectual. my experience atharvard when i was here 20 years ago wasthat nobody talked about furniture plans, therole of furniture plans in how a buildingwould be used, nobody

talked about lightings'role in atmosphere. there was a sort of fetishismabout the iconic potential of shapes of buildings. you know that becausefrank gehry, and toyo ito and these guys had donethese tremendous civic projects that-- i mean, you knowthere is that career waiting for somebody. but i knew that myvoice and design was going to be houses,residential, architecture

and decoration andthat atmosphere is key to know to dothat successfully. but i hoped, you know,that things would change and it seems likethey sort of have. i mean if i'm invited here,that's a great sign, right? thank you for asking that. yes? i wonder [inaudible]the house in long island i think it was that really youstruggled with the architect

about the interiors. and i'm wonderingwhat he was thinking was going to happenin that space, was anybody going tolive in that space? excellent question. well, you know what? that was a manifesto building. i wasn't workingwith that architect. that house was from 1980.

it was somebody i think whowas very interested in the feng shui of the site, theincredible, hypnotic, magical sight on the ocean. and so he set up thatview and then became obsessed with these hexagons,sort of like the philip johnson museum with the grid ofcircles or something. it was just that was thatthe message was these shapes. i didn't find it to be tenableas a living environment that anybody would tolerate.

and what i was proud of was thatwe didn't tear down the house. we decided to takethat challenge and see if we could come outsuccessfully by scooping out the contents of it. professor hildebrand? you have a question. thank you for thebeautiful talk. i loved the answer, youranswer to the first question. and it struck me that theanswer revealed something

about narrative in the work,that you build stories. and whether those arefictions or whether they're sort of fullyexcavated realities from the origins of a projector an owner's intentions, that that's beautiful. and i would love itif you would link that to being a writer, whichis also being a narrator. and i'm particularly struckby the-- bruce springsteen says that if you write onlyabout your own experience,

you won't last very long. and that always stuck withme, knowing his song catalog. and i think it'strue for someone who's a contributingeditor or someone who's called on to write regularly. you have to find stories. and what i thinkyou've done is you've woven your respect for those whocome before you in architecture and decoration into theroot of the work itself.

your projects arereal interventions. they push against the orthodoxyor the mania of the architect who didn't want a decorator. and so what youdo is somehow you combine your respectfor the origins and your own predilectiontoward building a story and making somethingwhole out of the both. yeah, you know, isometimes wonder if i shouldn't try tohave a signature style.

because that would be ascalable, marketable, easier thing instead ofstarting all over again, you know, inventing thestuff for every project. but i think if that was going tohappen it would be here with me already. and i can't do it that way. so what i like to do is to tryto add to the history of what has taken place already. with the neutra house,with the beach house.

and it means yourespect what you arrive and appraise as the reality. but what are yougoing to contribute that adds to that historyand you can't succumb to the deification of somethingthat is important architecture. it may not be the waysomebody wants to live in it. and the person who hatesthe inside of my house most is richard neutra's son,deon, who lives nearby. you know and all thevogue covers in the world

don't matter to him. i mean he just wantsit to be the way, he has one idea ofhow that could be. and an interesting snaps-- [inaudible] yeah, yeah, my housethat his father was-- [inaudible] his vision is theone that his dad [inaudible] correct, in the early black andwhite photo with the children. but there's a documentarycalled concert of wills,

about the building of the gettymuseum and richard meier's epic project. but his interactionwith thierry despont, who is designing the 18thcentury french decorative arts galleries, which is a majorcomponent of the getty holdings. you know, the getty didnot want white boxes holding the 18thcentury furniture. they wanted to have thecomplete environments.

and meier, greatas he is, does not believe that there are anyother colors in the canon, you know thevocabulary to be drawn on for this project thanblack and white, well, basically than white. and he and thierryreally get into it, and there's even morebrutal scenes between him and the landscapedesigner, bob irwin. but that stuff,you know, it tends

to be a tussle in themiddle, but i really can't think of a timewhen it hasn't ended well. and the architect, even ifchallenged and frustrated by my outresuggestions, in the end, you know, sees that it's turnedout well and tends to agree. i'm still working ondion, but he's 90. it's harder to changepeople's minds at that age. tim? having just been throughthe philip johnson house,

if you had some thoughtsabout what you might do there? if you are even at thatpoint, maybe you're still like taking it all in. but-- you know what? that's something thati think is impossible. i'm not going toabdicate answering, but i think thatthat's no one's house. so right there youcan't, you can't say,

it was for thisperson and that's why they love you know[inaudible] and this is their story that we want tolayer up on top of the phillip johnson story. that thing has tostop in time and be a platform for its identity. and it really is a muchmore important house than a lot of people realize,because it's the ancestor of the glass house.

but i think the greatsolution for that would be to have rotatingexhibitions and sort of curated installationsof furniture there by greatdesigners who appreciate what it is and can betrusted to lift it, you know, the integrity ofthe whole place. and maybe a great auctionhouse like phillips, that really supportsmodern design and they can exhibit furniturethere and photograph it

as the backdrop for a catalog. the johnson house shouldbe an unfinished thought is my short answer to that. it's been beautifullyrestored, and you don't really want to complete somethingthat nobody can ever own. because the storyof that is it's going to be growing as alegacy of architecture, not of completely decorated rooms. i look forward towatching that happen.

right? i guess that's it, scott. i mentioned you. did you like your shout out? it's really excitingto be back here. i just wanted to say that idon't think that anybody, what? oh, now you want to talk. i want to say to the fewstudents that are still in here, but many alum,that nobody but the people

in this room realizes howhard it is, what you're doing. i had a friend who haddone basic training in the israeli militaryand then come to the gsd. and he said that the gsdwas harder than that. that the sleep deprivationand the incredible work hours that you put intogetting this degree have my completerespect, whether i'm a decorator or failed attemptto graduate from here. and i sort of-- it was importantto me to come and say that.

thank you for having me.

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