Classic Interiors
by Darcy Farquear'say
Is interior design an art or a science? Neither - it is a theology.
Transfiguring the mundane into epic space requires tremendous spiritual power, whether 'home' is a gritty, urban industrial building in north London or something similar south of the river.
It is surely no coincidence that lifestyle trends in recent years have been so 'lofty'! True style is immortal, resisting the heave and churn of common life with its concealed underpinnings of
genius and internal walls removed. O Sancta simplicitas!
Yet interiors have not always been empty. The first selection from my interior archives shows Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1919 struggling with both a real and a metaphorical turkey. Could this failed experiment in half-colonnading a friend's Potsdam apartment have provoked
the later, marvellously pared-down Barcelona Pavilion?
The second picture is of a mews kitchen fit-out in Kentish Town by celebrated crypto-Stalinist design maestro Hovis Bench. Gorgeously retro, even in 1954!
The third shows jazz architect Johnny Vitruvio in his New York 'smackpad', circa 1962. A compelling blend of New Internationalist Style and intelligent lighting, improvised over a 4/4 Palladian grid in oatmeal and
charcoal
Interior design is indeed a broad church - but a church floored in vanilla tiling, containing a central sculptural element, and with original pews replaced with
spindly furniture.
Au revoir!
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