Category: Home & Kitchen

Interior designer Melanie Raines has applied her experience in hospitality design to ensure the large spaces of this Austin family home feel cosy, playful and “a bit irreverent”.

Raines, who recently moved to the Texas capital from LA, was discovered by the clients after they visited the Soho Little Beach House in Malibu and researched the team behind its interiors.

After connecting on LinkedIn and realising they are now based in the same city, the family asked her to design the interiors of a property they were building.

The house, designed by local firm Ryan Street Architects, was originally conceived as a 12,500-square-foot (1,160-square-metre) California barn-inspired home with vast living spaces, six bedrooms and a guest house.

However, the music-loving homeowners decided that the interiors should better reflect their creative personalities, and provide a “weird and funky” environment for their four children and two dogs.

“By the time we were brought onto the project, they were hoping to see more of themselves in the interior design: colorful, playful, and artful people who love music and don’t take things too seriously,” Raines told Dezeen.

“For this reason, the central design challenge was to marry the architecture of exposed steel and reclaimed wood with an interior that felt fresh, playful, and distinctive.”

One of the biggest challenges was to make the huge open living room feel intimate and cosy.

This was achieved by arranging furniture in different zones, a trick borrowed from Raines’ career in the boutique hospitality sector.

A large wooden ping-pong table that doubles as a dining surface sits at the centre, accompanied by velvet-upholstered stools.

On the other side, a curve chocolate-brown leather sofa sits atop textured red rugs to create a nook in front of a bar area, which has a built-in pizza oven.

Above the bar, a cut-out in the floor of a mezzanine balcony is replaced with a rope net to form a hammock.

Other vertical elements help to draw the eye up, including the fireplace clad in split-face, industrial concrete blocks and a swing suspended on ropes from the 22-foot (6.7-metre) ceiling.

To unite the various ground-floor spaces, walnut is repeated across several surfaces and details.

“Occasionally we joked that it’s the ‘house that walnut built’ – the floors, millwork, and many of the furnishings are a beautiful American black walnut,” Raines said.

This is especially true in the kitchen, where millwork on the island and built-in cabinetry are all crafted from the material – echoing the reclaimed timber ceilings and the exterior cladding visible through giant windows.

While colour is used sparingly as accents in the living area, a much bolder approach was taken in other rooms.

“The clients came to develop a trust in some colour sensibilities that became the moods around the home,” explained Raines. “We landed on a creamy off-white in the main spaces, then got especially playful in the ancillary spaces.”

Dark blues were chosen to create a relaxing atmosphere in the primary bedroom, where a corner is designated for the couple to enjoy tea together, while a retro aesthetic was guided by a green sofa in the near-black movie room.

Smaller spaces like closets and bathrooms are decorated with a variety of patterned wallpapers, some of which Raines described as “PG-13”.

In the guest house, wood panelling paired with tan and orange leathers offers a “1970s lakehouse feel”, and the primary powder bath has a black terrazzo stone ceiling.

“The atmosphere needed to be creative, inspirational, artful, and un-precious,” said Raines. “Anything ‘fancy’ was immediately thrown out!”

“It was a reaction on both my part and theirs to the age of over-design, and we were really able to throw some wild ideas out to see what stuck, then remix them to create an intentional – but a bit irreverent – final design,” she added.

Austin is one of the fastest-growing cities in the US and has seen a spike in residential architecture and interior projects as a result.

Others that have been completed recently include a gabled family home clad in limestone and fibre cement by Clayton Korte and a residence with dark grey walls and a crisp silhouette by Side Angle Side.

The photography is by Chase Daniel.

A return to the frivolous aesthetics of the British Empire tells us that all is not right in the world, writes Samuel Johnson-Schlee, author of the book Living Rooms.

In a moment where climate breakdown, economic uncertainty, geopolitical crisis, and many other things threaten to destroy the things that the middle classes take for granted, there appears to be a renewed interest in the extravagant, the ornate, and the rococo.

For instance, Lulu Lytle, whose design studio Soane Britain – named presumably after the influential architect John Soane – is remarkably upfront in its use of an imperial aesthetic; it even has a range called Egyptomania.

It makes sense that Boris Johnson chose this designer for his controversial Downing Street flat refurbishment, given that they share a nostalgia for an era of British power and colonial plunder. Why though, in a moment where it feels like there is more awareness than ever of the violence and injustice wrought by the British Empire, are we returning to such an aesthetic?

We return to the ornate for some of the same things that were sought from similar aesthetics in the past

On 15 October, the Leighton House Museum re-opened in Holland Park after a major refit. Previously something of a secret, the museum’s publicity machine is now in full swing. The house of a neo-classical Victorian painter, Frederic Leighton, was designed to reflect his enthusiasm for that generically foreign Victorian obsession, The Orient.

The most magnificent room in the house is the so-called Arab Hall. This room was an extension to the house built between 1877 and 1881, designed to display textiles and ceramics gathered from Leighton’s trips to Turkey, Egypt, and Syria.

Some of these objects were purchased, others were “procured” by a friend in the East India Company. A wild array of tiles cover the walls and beneath the golden-domed ceiling, a small fountain burbles. This should not be mistaken for a simple marker of admiration for different cultures – as the great critic of orientalism Edward Said puts it: “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient”.

Why are we drawn back to this aesthetic? It is too simple to attribute it to nostalgia alone and should be seen in the broader context of the trend for maximalism. We return to the ornate for some of the same things that were sought from similar aesthetics in the past.

If you scroll through Instagram you will find many of the elements of the bourgeois home of the nineteenth century. Pot plants, gallery walls, velvet, wallpaper, lace: the basic language of the fashionable urban middle classes from the early decades of industrialised capitalism are making a comeback. Perhaps we are doing something akin to the Orientalists, setting modern life off against an impossibly distant other in order to better come to terms with the world we live in.

The designers House of Hackney are purveyors of a pattern-clashing William Morris redux; it is as if Dennis Severs’ house had been processed through a succession of lurid Instagram filters. However, they do not tend to dwell on their obvious historical influences.

On their website, their Wallpaper Plantasia, a multi-coloured riff on the landscapes of French Toile du Jouy, is described as: “our vision of an idyllic landscape, completely untouched by man”. Instead of claiming authenticity via craftsmanship or historical detail, they are reproducing the back-to-nature fantasies of people like philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau who, reeling at the alienation of the coming Industrial Age, idealised the life of the pre-cultural ‘savage’ [sic].

There is also an element of the surreal in the current trend for maximalism

This untethered enthusiasm for an imagined naturalness recalls bourgeois Victorian crazes for natural history, such as the vogue for ferns known as pteridomania, which launched dozens of designs, including the decoration on a custard cream biscuit. The House of Hackney designers wear their romanticism on their sleeves, their expensive products offer a way of introducing a reconstructed pastoral life within the confines of an East London home.

There is also an element of the surreal in the current trend for maximalism. In a recent article on this site, the live-in premises of Studio Job present what the designer Job Smeets refers to as a ‘visual assault’.

In the Design Museum, the exhibition Objects of Desire draws our attention to the history of surrealism and interior design. Particularly striking are the dream-like interiors that Salvador Dalí helped design for Edward James’ Sussex home Monkton House. Plush colour-clashing rooms include chairs with hands, telephones with Lobsters on top, and Mae West’s lips transformed into a sofa.

One of the best objects in the exhibition is a green carpet decorated with the footprints of James’ wife after leaving the bath. The effect of such extravagance is to create a kind of dream world, a space where it seems that the rules of reality are suspended and that all of your wishes might be fulfilled.

We create a space in which we can retreat from all the terror outside

We are looking for the same things in this aesthetic as the bourgeois did in their nineteenth-century apartments. The philosopher Walter Benjamin compared the homes of wealthy city-dwellers in the nineteenth century to the inside of a compass case, the body held in place by folds of violet velour. He described the wildly busy world of knickknacks, doilies, chintz and velvet as if it were the manifestation of a kind of religion, calling these objects ‘fallen household deities’ arranged to protect the householder from the violence and cruelty of the world outside. The same world that these people were profiting from.

By cultivating somewhere to live that is dream-like, natural, or utterly different from our everyday lives, we create a space in which we can retreat from all the terror outside. And just as was the case in the nineteenth century, the more money you spend the more protected you can become, hidden amongst your excessive home décor.

I’m not making a judgment, I am as susceptible to a brightly coloured wall and a clashing floral pattern as the next person, but it is important to recognise that even the most apparently frivolous design is shaped by the present moment. In contrast to the optimism that accompanied the slick minimalism of the nineties, the terrifying situation that we live in today has conjured a desire for the wealthy to hide themselves away.

But it is more than simple escape that drives this trend – I think unconsciously we are reaching for something. Maximalism is a manifestation of a desire for a different world, and if we can reflect critically on the kinds of things we are reaching for, we might also be able to find greater impetus to act to prevent the coming of the world that is so frightening.

Sam Johnson-Schlee is an academic and writer living by the sea in North Essex. He teaches Town Planning at London South Bank University. His first book, Living Rooms, is published by Peninsula Press on 10 November this year.

Promotion: longevity clinic Modern Age has opened its flagship studio in New York City, with an interior design featuring translucent 3form materials, which aims to create a welcoming environment.

The Modern Age studio offers a wide range of treatments and products, including IV drip therapy, botox and wrinkle relaxers, vitamins and hormone therapy.

The flagship clinic was designed in-house by the brand’s head of studio design Madelynn Ringo, who wanted to create a calm and welcoming environment for clients undertaking treatments.

To achieve a futuristic look, 3form’s Chroma resin material was chosen to feature in several places to create consistency throughout the interior while conjuring the desired mood.

Chroma is a thick resin that 3form describes as offering high clarity and light transmission, which is durable and cleanable enough to be used even for horizontal applications such as tables, benches, boxes and counters.

Its look is highly customisable with an array of finishes, diffusions and effects, and a choice of more than 250 colours.

Ringo wanted to create private spaces within the studio without reducing the light transmission, so she used Chroma in a peachy coral hue to make translucent pocket doors for the suites, and then applied the material again as shelving in the retail area to tie the interior together.

The material helps the space to look glowy and inviting and has the advantage of being easy to work with.

“3form’s materials are similar to glass, but are much lighter weight,” said Ringo. “This allows us to fabricate it in other ways that would be too heavy if we tried to use glass.”

“Sometimes we can send it to our fabricators to craft into different shapes, which is easier and safer to cut than glass onsite.”

Modern Age was also keen to work with environmentally friendly materials, and 3form’s material has the GreenGuard Gold certification for being low in chemical emissions and the Declare Label disclosing all of the ingredients in the final product.

Ringo completed the space with more textured materials and finishes that provide a contrast to Chroma. They are also meant to hint at the ageing process and the beauty of imperfections.

“Everyone has their own imperfections and we highlight that through the materiality of the space,” said Ringo. “The veininess of the terracotta tiles represents signs of ageing. The walls have a painterly limewash, to not show something that was too refined.”

3form is an American brand that manufactures a range of resin, glass and felt materials for various architectural applications. In addition to its environmental sustainability goals, it also holds a Just Label, which recognises its social justice and equity outcomes.

Visit 3form’s website for more information on Chroma and its other products.

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for 3form as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

Promotion: Fiandre Architectural Surfaces porcelain slabs, digitally printed with 1.5 million icons, cover the facade of an Armenian church in Texas designed by New York-based architect David Hotson.

For the facade of Saint Sarkis Armenian Church in Carrollton, Texas, architect David Hotson and Yerevan-trained architectural designer Ani Sahakyan worked closely with Italian architectural surface manufacturer Fiandre to create a facade that works at a series of visual scales.

The church’s western facade that surrounds its entrance is clad with porcelain slabs depicting a traditional Armenian cross or “tree of life” with distinctive floral branching arms. This Armenian symbol of faith in the face of suffering and of resurrection and redemption serves as a memorial to the victims of the Armenian genocide.

Viewed more closely, as the visitor approaches the church, the cross is composed of interwoven botanical and geometrical motifs drawn from Armenian art. These motifs represent the bonds of ancestry and tradition that have bound the Armenian community together across centuries of challenge and upheaval.

Examined from even closer proximity, visitors will be able to see that the slabs are covered with individual icons or pixels, each one centimetre in diameter.

Printed at a high resolution using Fiandre’s “Design Your Slab” or DYS printed porcelain slab system, the tiny icons – 1.5 million in total – cover the entire church facade. All of the icons are unique and derived from the circular emblems that recur throughout Armenian decorative arts.

The 1.5 million unique icons are designed to symbolise the individuals who were murdered in the Armenian genocide. The scale of the individual icons that are spread across the entire building facade is intended to make tangible the scale of this historical atrocity.

To create the facade design, a computer script was developed by architectural designer Ben Elmer to generate the icons based on ancient Armenian ornamental motifs.

These icons were scaled to fit a total of 1.5 million on the facade and were distributed according to density to form larger-scale patterns when viewed from a distance.

The motifs were printed to the exact pixel modules required onto Fiandre’s large-format, exterior-grade, UV-resistant porcelain rain screen slabs.

“The facade is believed to be the first use of this technology to optically engage the viewer in a series of visual scales nested inside each other, from the scale of an entire architectural facade to the scale of individual pixels each rendered in high-resolution at the threshold of visual perception,” said Fiandre.

In addition to the memorial facade, Fiandre supplied the full range of porcelain interior and exterior floor, wall and soffit finishes used throughout the Saint Sarkis Campus.

New York-based Hotson’s design for the new church building is modelled on the ancient church of Saint Hripsime, which stands near Armenia’s modern capital of Yerevan.

Having withstood fourteen centuries of upheaval, Saint Hripsime serves as a symbol of the endurance, perseverance, and resilience of the Armenian people. The cornerstone of Saint Sarkis was laid in 2018, fourteen centuries after Saint Hripsime was completed in 618 AD.

“From this brief, Hotson developed a design that looks forward as well as backward, marrying ancient architectural and artistic traditions reflecting Armenia’s cultural legacy as the world’s first Christian nation with contemporary digitally-driven design and fabrication technologies,” explained the manufacturer.

To learn more about Fiandre Architectural Surfaces, visit the brand’s website.

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for Fiandre as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

Big style, small budget and a kitchen remodel? These phrases rarely seem synonymous. However, you can significantly reduce the cost of your kitchen remodel with a few smart, money-saving tips from the top professionals. Whether you’re trying to maximize your cooking space or give an outdated kitchen a makeover, these experts are here to help you get the kitchen you’ve always wanted.

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Sheer curtains that look like translucent walls were used to divide up the structure of this temporary showroom space in Japan created by Domino Architects.

Shortlisted in the large retail interiors category of Dezeen Awards 2022, PROUD Gallery Gotanda aims to offer a solution to the wasteful practice of producing condominium showrooms – temporary structures near new developments that are used as a base for sales teams.

The showrooms, which are usually built and then demolished within a matter of years once the units are all sold, typically contain a customer reception and seating area, as well as rooms for meetings and presentations. These are all styled with the target customer in mind.

“It’s like a theme park with effects to motivate people to buy,” said the architecture studio.

“As entertainment, it is very interesting, but we wonder if this method of spending a large amount of energy each time is really appropriate for this age.”

Domino Architects worked with HAKUTEN and Nozomi Kume from Studio Onder de Linde to create a more sustainable alternative for Nomura Real Estate Development and its PROUD condominium brand in Tokyo.

Built using the prefabricated skeleton structure of an existing Nomura showroom, the layout of PROUD Gallery Gotanda is easy to change, expand and reconstruct.

The steel structure is wrapped with light curtains while the partitions inside the business meeting space are made from “foldable walls”, which are curtains with a wall-like thickness.

These foldable walls have arched openings and can be repositioned so that the layout can be easily changed according to purpose.

“By carefully examining the sheen, curves, and colour overlap of the curtains, we were able to create an elegant and light space that does not feel like a rugged prefabricated structure,” the studio said.

The materials and samples used in the planned condominiums are subtly incorporated into the interior as part of the showroom’s furniture and fixtures.

The idea is to allow the buyer to imagine a space rather than be entirely dictated to.

In Amsterdam, design studio Beyond Space has created an office interior in Amsterdam that uses rippling laser-cut fabric to form cave-like spaces for working.

The photography is by Gottingham.