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The Art & Design Issue
Those edifices where we live, work, learn, play and pray are designed by architects whose visions are constantly evolving. Decorated in terms of traditions, special tastes and current fads, these dwellings and buildings define us just as they are defined by us. Every year, Metro Pulse takes a look at the fields of architecture and design. Here’s what’s new, old and in-between in 2004. Read on.
Opening up the House
Walls are out, but the trend is also ‘more is less’
by Barry Henderson
Once upon a time, the idea of interior space in the American home was openness, with family or friends gathering around the kitchen, taking their ease and jawing as food was prepared. The kitchen-living area was all one room. We’re talking frontier life, here, before the idea of compartmentalizing activities and necessities into separate rooms took hold.
The concept has come full circle, according to members of Knoxville’s interior design community, who consult on the space needs and uses and décor for new and remodeled single-family free-standing residences.
The result is a more casual, relaxed environment inside the home, and a studied, elegant simplicity is what the designers are striving for and achieving for their clients by minimizing the fussy details that used to characterize the design and décor model as recently as the late ‘90s.
Walls are coming down, or never going up, windows are opening ever wider, and the trend toward larger total living spaces is continuing. The McMansion’s scale may be the ideal, but its look and feel is reducing itself to simpler terms.
“One interesting thing is that people seem to be moving away from living rooms entirely,” Amanda Breazeale, a designer for Cleveland-Smith Interiors on Kingston Pike in Bearden, says, and Lon J. Brown, partner/designer of Brown-Hazen House on Homberg Drive agrees.
“There’s a move to more open space, multi-use rooms, kitchens opening to the family room or all one room.” You are where you eat, in a sense. “Kitchens,” says Breazeale, “are the first thing people think about, the thing they focus on.”
“Formal living rooms,” says Molly Bland of Molly Bland Interiors on Troy Circle off of Baum Drive, “are being converted for formal library/home office areas.”
Breazeale says that, if there is a living room at all, it’s a tiny “parlor” space off the entry that is hardly used, but those are getting rare. The extra space left by the departed living room goes into the family/kitchen area for entertaining or, says Bland, it turns up in “Bonus rooms—featuring customized study cubicles with computer access for youngsters.”
Windows to the outside are bigger than ever. “We’re getting so we hardly see any exterior walls,” says Brown, who also says his clients are more aware of “green design and sustainability.” They want houses designed to be used now and for generations to come, he says.
“Ecological friendliness is what [clients] want and what we’re working toward,” says Joy Matthews, a designer for Design Source and Associates on Sherway Drive. Simple, environmentally sound, but not cheap.
“Casual elegance is the tone repeated by client after client,” Bland says.
All of the designers interviewed say the predominant influences over new décor are either Manhattan-retro or European-country.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a real trend swing,” says Matthews. “The traditional look is a thing of the past.” She says her market is, roughly, centered in the 29-to-39 or early 40s age group, and they are the trendsetters. She calls the mood they’re after “a sleeker, slimmer look where more is less and excess is out.” It’s a little on the retro side, she says, but “The people who like it aren’t old enough to know it’s retro.”
Bland says the furnishings she sees fitting into the current designs are inspired by the homes of Provence or Tuscany. She and the others point out that burnished wood, “patinaed” finishes, stone and ironwork are in, and brass and gold tones for fittings are not.
Kitchen appliances are big, elaborate, and stainless steel, for the most part, and cabinetry is expansive and often glazed, rather than painted.
Hand-made, decorated or textured tile work is in, while ordinary polished porcelain is out for kitchens or baths, unless the color is in. It’s not that easy to keep up with color.
Throughout the home, colors are a matter of taste, as always, but the trendy ones are tranquil “peaceful” blues (Matthews and Brown) “yellows are still big” (Brown) “Brights—and a soft pink” (Breazeale) and “a range, from neutrals—ginger, cocoa, bronze, nugget gold, to colors that pop—moss, spice red, lime and peridot [a purplish shade]” (Bland).
Baths go with every bedroom, depending on budget, and, for the high-end, separate “his and her” baths go with the master bedroom or suite, which very nearly must be on the main floor and separated from the children’s or guest rooms or suites.
There’s room for suites in these homes today, with 3,000 square feet being near the bottom of the new or remodeled houses that are affording a design consultant. There are smaller exceptions, of course, but they are for those who still believe that less is more. Woefully behind the trend, they may be ahead of the next one. Who knows?
The designers are the first to concede that such things go around and come back unpredictably. By the time you get with it, it may be gone, although such rapid trend realignments are a designer’s nightmare and sweet dream combined.
November 4, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 45
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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