One night while seeing Nathan Lane in The Nance (a very good play, by the way), I had finished reading my Playbill and was studying the grand drape: this one in particular was rich red velvet heavy laden with gold fringe masking the proscenium of the gorgeously decadent Lyceum Theatre … [read more]
- Art
- Bathrooms
- Beach
- Books
- branding
- Ceilings
- Children
- Color
- Corporate Design
- Design
- Dining Rooms
- Drawing
- Education
- Equestrian
- Farm Structures
- Fireplaces
- Firm News
- Furniture
- Gardens
- Holidays
- Home Design
- Interior Design
- Kitchen
- Lake
- Landscape
- Magazines
- Materials
- Memorials
- Moving
- Musings
- Office
- Organizing
- Outdoor spaces
- Robb Report
- Second Homes
- Stanford White Award
- Television
- Travel
- Uncategorized
- Windows
roof with a view
Perched on roofs like sentinels, their watchful gaze offers witness to life below. As far as architectural design goes, they can be shed, gabled, flat or hipped. That design call should be made based on the overall style of the house. After all, these garret structures can be seen as … [read more]
NYC10
I polled Bobby McAlpine and Ray Booth and asked them what beautiful Gotham spaces haunted their memories. Expectedly, their choices mirrored some of my own. In no particular order, here are our top ten: The Temple of Dendur in the Sackler Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art The combination of … [read more]

stool of thought
That’s precisely why we architects and designers exist as a profession. After all, just about anyone can draft a house – a room – a chair; that’s base vocational training. When sculpture results in the manufacture of the everyday, then shelter and gear venture into the realm of art. Take … [read more]

the poet of place: a birthday honor
I was pondering all the words, both profound and profane, I’ve heard from him in the past 28 years of our relationship. I wish I could relay these but his thought process, passion and humor are hard to describe; you just have to experience them. The best print interview … [read more]

lake cabin fever – contagion
After he sold it, the simple design continued to haunt his memory. This little wooden tender box held such great lessons and memories within, he couldn’t seem to shake its elemental echoes. A simple witness, it spoke as clearly as a boy’s first tree house. An idea hit him one … [read more]

lake cabin fever
Situated across three counties, Lake Martin is one of the largest man-made lakes in the country, boasting 750 miles of wooded shoreline. It’s been a home to recreational water bugs since its creation in the 1920s. Our history with this lake goes back a few decades. In the mid-eighties, Bobby … [read more]

wall to wall
Today, walls get their due spotlight. The wall plane is by far the most beheld of all room elements (it’s is at eye level, after all). Dressing the wall, however, can go far beyond the drab frock of sheetrock. Here are some examples of where we took the concept of … [read more]
a fairy tale cottage
This past December, one of our houses appeared in a French design magazine called Maison Chic. It’s a wonderfully quirky house we designed once upon a time in Birmingham, Alabama for a lovely couple who yearned for a storybook English cottage. They were always attracted to those unique 1920s era … [read more]

underfoot
The following four categories pictorially illustrate some of our favorite floor finishes: wood, natural tile, concrete tile and concrete. All offer durable, beautiful richness and each were carefully selected for appropriateness in their respective design. These may be underfoot but the impact of gorgeous flooring should never be underrated. WOOD … [read more]
