Interior design Archives

Architecture Now! 4

June 30, 2009 by Roy Johnson

illustrated review of contemporary architectural design

The previous edition of this series, Architecture Now!, was the winner of the prestigious Saint-Etienne Prize for the Best Architecture and Design Book of 2004. Now volume four brings an even more spectacular portfolio of contemporary architecture and design to a general readership via Taschen’s policy of high quality publications at budget prices. The selection here is quite breathtaking. Projects range from multi-million pound buildings to humble constructions such as a tree house, a loft extension, and a prototype for sheltered housing made out of sandbags.

There’s an exhibition centre built out of old shipping containers, a water purification plant, and one spectacular private commission for a house built on a cliff top with a suspended swimming pool which looks as if it is floating in mid-air.

Each entry presents full contact details for the featured architects, including their web sites, many of which are works of art in their own right. The text is in three languages – English, French, and German – but the emphasis is emphatically upon visual presentation. Beautiful high-quality photographs bring out in full the contrasting textures of materials such as plate glass, brick and natural stone, water, concrete, and polished copper.

You’ve got to be on your visual toes, because some of the projects only exist as models and mock-ups; but they are rendered using digital techniques which blend natural landscapes with computer-generated images in such a way that you’d swear you were looking at a finished construction.

The selection includes all the well known names you would expect to find in a survey of this kind – Frank O Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, and Saha Hadid. But I was surprised the editor Philipe Jodidio did not include Richard Rogers, Norman Forster, Nicholas Grimshawe, or Renzo Piano. Yet strangely enough he does include work by the video installation artist Bill Viola and the painter Frank Stella, who has recently produced some sculpture with architectural forms.

I was pleased to note that Jodidio does not shy away from discussing the costs of some of these projects – many of which have notoriously run many times over budget. You get the feeling that he has not put his critical faculties on hold whilst he celebrates the obvious creativity on show. And he introduces some interesting concepts and techniques – such as ‘topographic insertion’, in which a construction is merged with its surrounding landscape.

This is a marvelously stimulating production which will appeal to anybody interested in modern building and design, and in particular those who are concerned with the integration of man-made environments into the natural world.

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Philipe Jodidio (ed), Architecture Now! V.4, London: Taschen, 2006, pp.576, ISBN 3822839892

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At Home with Books

June 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the libraries of book lovers and book collectors

I once lived in a twelve-room Victorian house filled from top to bottom with a book collection which represented forty years of reading, studying, and loving acquisition. Then a few years ago, a change in life style led me to auction off my libraries – the whole lot – a decision about which I have felt ambivalent ever since. This book helped to remove every last trace of that ambivalence. I now feel like cutting my own throat.

It’s a superbly illustrated tour of private libraries and book collections, showing how people have integrated books into their homes. Of course, not many of them are stuck for space: but even those people who live in flats and who have to carve out space from relatively modest surroundings are revealed as book lovers who respect books as objects and who wish to display their collections in a way which combines practicality with a love of good design.

But it’s also about a lot more than that: it covers all aspects of bibliographic enthusiasm. How to store your books so that you can get at them; how to organise your library; how to start a collection (and what to look for); how books should be bound; and even details such as bookplates, library ladders, and how the lighting of a library should be arranged.

The examples illustrated come from the homes of people whose entire lives revolve around the purchase, collection and love of books. People such as Seymour Durst whose five-storey house is devoted to books about the history of New York; Paul Getty who has his collection housed in a small castle; people such as the translator Richard Howard and the biographer John Richardson who actually live in the libraries they have created; and there are also some surprises such as the inclusion of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.

The one masterpiece of book storage I expected to find but didn’t was that of Sir John Soane’s house (now a museum) in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, but that is perhaps because most of the examples shown are located in the USA.

There are all sorts of beautiful oddities: a collector who recovers all his books with cream paper so that they blend in with his furniture; bookspaces arranged by interior designers such as Bill Blass and David Hicks, who has most of his book bound in red to match his trademark colour scheme.

These people take their bibliophilic really seriously. Mitchell Wolfson Jr, who lives in Miami, where the climate is inimical to book life, has both climate control and insect-free environments in his home and his museum.

The advice also includes such curiosities as how to protect books against attack by bookworms and other vermin by putting them into plastic bags and freezing them overnight; plus how to best to design private libraries, and if you are stuck for the details, where to find bookdealers, book fairs, and makers of library furnishings.

This is a beautifully produced book which will appeal to both bibliophiles and lovers of interior design. It is elegantly designed, lavishly illustrated, and it makes me realise I made a terrible mistake.

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Estelle Ellis, At Home with Books, London: Thames & Hudson, 2006, pp.248, ISBN 0500286116

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Bauhaus 1919-1933

October 22, 2009 by Roy Johnson

modernist design movement

Bauhaus was a design movement which sprang up in Germany in post 1914-1918 as a reaction to the efflorescent curlicues of la Belle Epoque. It emphasised (particularly in theory) rectilinear practicality, function over form, and a political element of art for the masses rather than a privileged few. Most of its designers were of course middle-class artists who were caught up in the revolutionary fervour of the Weimar Republic – but its greatest strength in terms of enduring design is that many of its creations are still in production today. Wallpapers are still in print, vintage retro table lamps are either being reproduced at exorbitant prices, or are trading on eBay for not much less.

This is an excellent presentation of the work done there – for a number of reasons. First, it shows a wide range of products – from paintings, furniture, and architecture, to photography and household effects. Second, the illustrations are fresh and well researched. There are illustrations here I have never seen before in books on the subject. And third, there is plenty of historical depth and context, including original photos of the Bauhaus studios and the people who taught there.

The staff list is like a roll call of modernism at its highest – architects Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, designer Herbert Bayer, painters Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Joseph Albers, and Lionel Feininger, artists El Lizitsky and Moholy-Nagy, plus the constructivists Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. I was also glad to see that the book included work by the wonderful and much under-rated product designer Marianne Brandt.

The format of the book is simple and effective. Double page spreads are arranged with explanatory text on the left and colour illustrations on the right. Just the right sort of proportion for this type of book. Full details of each item are provided, and there are links to further information in the appendices.

The range of items is quite astonishing. There are buildings (the Bauhaus workshops themselves) designs and photos of completed architectural projects, furniture, wall hangings, paintings, advertising posters, household objects such as electric lamps and tea sets, rugs, children’s toys, and photographs.

However, form and function were not always harmonised as successfully as they might have been. It has to be said that even a design ‘classic’ such as Gerrit Ritvelt’s armchair (1918) looked as modern as modern could be in 1918 – but as design critic Victor Papanek observes

These square abstractions painted in shrill primaries were almost impossible to sit in; they were extremely uncomfortable. Sharp corners ripped clothing, and the entire zany construction bore no relation to the human body

But the overwhelming impression one takes from a collection like this is of design inventiveness working at all levels – from architecture, interior and furniture design, through fabrics and furnishings, down to graphics and typography.

In fact much of today’s architectural design is directly attributable to the influence of the Bauhaus designers. Rectilinear buildings, minimalist interiors, walls made from glass bricks, bentwood furniture, ceiling to floor windows, uncarpeted hard surface floors. Moreover, the spirit of Bauhaus functionality lives on in the products and styles of stores such as Habitat and IKEA.

I got an email only the other day offering copies of the famous Barcelona chair (Mies van der Rohe 1929) for a mere $3000 – only they called it the ‘Madrid’ chair just to cover themselves. So the spirit of the Bauhaus is definitely alive and doing commercially well today thank you very much.

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Andrew Kennedy, Bauhaus, London: Flame Tree Publishing, 2005, pp.384, ISBN 184451336X

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Bloomsbury Art and Design

August 6, 2009 by Roy Johnson

painting, illustration, ceramics, interior design

The Bloomsbury Group included a number of painters and designers who had an important influence on the visual and decorative arts during the period of English modernism (1905—1930). The group included artists Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive Bell; the artist and critic (and Vanessa Bell’s lover) Roger Fry; the artist (and Vanessa Bell’s lifetime companion) Duncan Grant, plus painters Dora Carrington and Mark Gertler. Bloomsbury art and design was never a coherent movement with an agreed set of theories: it was a close-knit group of friends who shared an interest in aesthetics.

The following publications deal with the amazingly wide range of their art in its pure and applied manifestations. These range from easel paintings, public commissions, interior designs, book illustrations, furniture and tapestries, plus the celebrated wall decorations at Charleston.

The Art of Bloomsbury features the paintings and drawings of artists Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant – three of the central figures of the Bloomsbury Group. There are entries on two hundred works of art, all illustrated in colour, which bring out the chief characteristics of Bloomsbury painting – domestic, contemplative, sensuous, and essentially pacific. These are seen in landscapes, portraits, and still lifes set in London, Sussex, and the South of France. The volume also features the abstract painting and applied art that placed these artists at the forefront of the avant-garde before the First World War. There are portraits of family and friends – from Virginia Woolf and Maynard Keynes to Aldous Huxley and Edith Sitwell. Essays by leading scholars provide further insights into the works and the changing critical reaction to them.
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Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity is a scholarly study which traces the development of Bloomsbury’s domestic aesthetic from the group’s influential Post-Impressionism in Britain around 1910 through to the 1930s. Christopher Reed makes detailed studies of rooms and environments created by Virginia Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry, and he puts them into the context of aesthetic debates of the period. His study challenges the accepted notion that these artists drifted away from orthodox modernism. Whatever you think of the book’s theoretical arguments, it’s a beautifully illustrated production, full of fascinating paintings, fabrics, decoration, interior design, and original graphics.
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The Art of Dora Carrington At the age of 38, Dora Carrington (1893-1932) committed suicide, unable to contemplate living without her companion, Lytton Strachey, who had died a few weeks before. The association with Lytton and his Bloomsbury friends, combined with her own modesty have tended to overshadow Carrington’s contribution to modern British painting. She hardly exhibited at all during her own lifetime, and didn’t even bother signing her own works. This book aims to redress the balance by looking at the immense range of her work. She produced portraits, landscapes, glass paintings, letter illustrations and decorative work – all illustrated here in full colour. It also acts as an introduction to the artist herself, with rare photographs helping form a fuller picture of this fascinating woman.
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The Bloomsbury Artists: Prints and Book Designs This volume catalogues the woodcuts, lithographs, etchings and other prints created by Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant – with various colour and black and white reproductions. Of particular interest are the many book jackets designed for the Hogarth Press, the publishing company established by Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. Also included are ephemera such as social invitations, trade cards, catalogue covers, and bookplates. Many of these were produced as part of the movement for modern design established by the Omega Workshops.
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Vision and Design is a collection of Roger Fry’s best articles and writings. It had a significant impact on the art world in the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike many critics and scholars of the time, Fry expanded his discussion on art outside of the Western world, even to the degree of contending that primitive sculpture surpasses that of the West. As well as Western art, the book examines the use of form and aesthetics in ethnic art from Africa, America and Asia. It reinforced his position as a critic and it is still recognised as an extremely influential work in the development of modernist theory.
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Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden by Quentin Bell and Virginia Nicolson encapsulates the artistic sensibility of the Bloomsbury Group. It is an illustrated record of the farmhouse at Charleston in Sussex which Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant treated as a blank canvas in interior design. In doing so, they created a treasury of Bloomsbury art. The book provides family memories and anecdotes drawn from a lifetime’s experience. Each room links the interiors with some of the leading cultural figures of the 20th century, plus guests such as Vanessa’s sister Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey. Specially commissioned photographs portray the essence of the Bloomsbury style both throughout the house, with its painted furniture and walls, plus decorative items, paintings, and objects in the garden.
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The Art of Duncan Grant In addition to being a central figure in the Bloomsbury group, Duncan Grant played a leading role in the establishment of modernist art in Britain. His principal works were easel paintings, but he also produced murals, fabric designs, theatre and ballet work, illustration and print-making, and commercial interior decoration. Throughout a long life Duncan Grant continued to experiment with and adapt to new styles and techniques, and this book offers an opportunity to grasp the extent of his achievement. It examines the influence that people and places had on him and demonstrates, with more than a hundred illustrations of his work, the range of his talent. It’s been said that he was as polymorphous in his work as he was in his much-discussed private life.
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Bloomsbury Group – web links

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, featuring designs by Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, and others.

The Omega Workshops
A brief history of Roger Fry’s experimental Omega Workshops, which had a lasting influence on interior design in post First World War Britain.

The Bloomsbury Group and War
An essay on the largely pacifist and internationalist stance taken by Bloomsbury Group members towards the First World War.

Tate Gallery Archive Journeys: Bloomsbury
Mini web site featuring photos, paintings, a timeline, sub-sections on the Omega Workshops, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant, and biographical notes.

Bloomsbury: Books, Art and Design
Exhibition of paintings, designs, and ceramics at Toronto University featuring Hogarth Press, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Quentin Bell, and Stephen Tomlin.

Blogging Woolf
A rich enthusiast site featuring news of events, exhibitions, new book reviews, relevant links, study resources, and anything related to Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search the texts of all Woolf’s major works, and track down phrases, quotes, and even individual words in their original context.

A Mrs Dalloway Walk in London
An annotated description of Clarissa Dalloway’s walk from Westminster to Regent’s Park, with historical updates and a bibliography.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Annotated tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury, including Gordon Square, University College, Bedford Square, Doughty Street, and Tavistock Square.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
News of events, regular bulletins, study materials, publications, and related links. Largely the work of Virginia Woolf specialist Stuart N. Clarke.

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
A charming sound recording of a BBC radio talk broadcast in 1937 – accompanied by a slideshow of photographs of Virginia Woolf.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephens’ collection of family photographs which became known as the Mausoleum Book, collected at Smith College – Massachusetts.

Bloomsbury at Duke University
A collection of book jacket covers, Fry’s Twelve Woodcuts, Strachey’s ‘Elizabeth and Essex’.

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Bloomsbury Rooms

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity

Bloomsbury Rooms is a beautifully illustrated book which explores the relationship between Bloomsbury notions of aesthetics and the actual interior designs of the homes in which its members lived. Christopher Reed takes their various houses as starting points – 46 Gordon Square, Asheham, Brunswick Square, Charleston, 52 Tavistock Square – for meditations on their socio-psychological development and the notions of art practised by Vanessa Bell, Walter Sickert, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant.

It should be said from the outset that although this has the size and has the high production values of a coffee table book, it is not a casual or an easy read. Christopher Reed situates Bloomsbury within theoretical concepts of art that were competing with each other in the early phase of European modernism in a serious and heavyweight fashion. And these theories themselves are analysed in a political and ideological manner. In fact his study is not only about Bloomsbury’s domestic interiors. He is profoundly well-read in the whole Bloomsbury oeuvre, and right from the start he emphasises the political radicalism out of which much of its artistic practices sprung.

He engages quite passionately with art theory, social criticism, and the philosophic relationship between politics and human relations to which they gave expression in their domestic lives. He sees this as an early version of an idea we now express as ‘the personal is political’.

His study challenges the accepted notion that these artists drifted away from orthodox modernism. He argues that their aesthetics were formed by fully conscious choices, made by people who were often more politically radical than was generally acknowledged – both then and now.

Whatever you think of the book’s theoretical arguments, it’s a beautifully illustrated production, full of fascinating paintings, fabrics, decoration, interior design, and original graphics. It’s meticulously researched, fully annotated with extensive notes, an enormous bibliography, and a full index.

And Bloomsbury was a world of graphic and interior design, as well as literary culture. Vanessa Bell was a painter and book illustrator, Duncan Grant was a painter and interior designer, and Roger Fry was a painter, art critic, and at one time advisor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Many of their designs for the Omega workshops are in evidence here, as well as the decoration of their own homes in both London and the countryside. Artistic theory aside, for most readers it will be the photographs, illustrations, the paintings, ceramics, and textile designs which will be the main attraction here. There simply aren’t any other books in print offering such a rich glimpse into the visual world that Bloomsbury represents.

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Christopher Reed, Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity, New York: Yale University Press, 2004, pp.314, ISBN: 0300102488

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Charleston: Past and Present

May 23, 2009 by Roy Johnson

official guide to one of Bloomsbury’s cultural treasures

Charleston is the country house in Lewes, Sussex which was established as a family home by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. She was married to Clive Bell at the time and had children by both men, but this was how things were done in the Bloomsbury Group. They lived in the house for over fifty years, covering the walls and furniture with their paintings, designing ceramics, making rugs and wall hangings, cultivating the gardens – and generally forming what became a unique collection of domestic and interior design.

The house also became the country retreat for many of the Bloomsbury Group. Vanessa raised her children Julian, Quentin and Angelica there, and she was visited by her sister Virginia Woolf, as well as by her ex-lover Roger Fry, and at weekends her husband Clive Bell and his lover Mary Hutchinson. These people in turn brought their friends such as John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, E.M.Forster, and David Garnett. Their personal lives and relationships were rather complicated, but this joint artistic venture was one that helped cement their common interests in design, decoration, painting, and domestic arts.

The Bloomsberries were great supporters of modern art, and many of them had made judicious purchases long before the artists became well known. Consequently, the walls of the house came to be decorated not only with their own paintings, but with works by Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, and Modigliani.

The main part of the book is the official guide to the house and gardens, written by Bloomsbury expert Richard Shone. This contains details of the contents of all the main rooms, and is well illustrated by colour photographs of their principal features and objects.

The latter part of the book is a collection of letters and memoirs, written by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett, who was his sister but who didn’t know that her father was Duncan Grant until she was eighteen. Quentin Bell’s memoir is of an idyllic childhood, spent with his brother Julian, largely unsupervised by semi-absent parents. He gives a Swallows and Amazons type of account.

His sister Angelica’s is more seriously thoughtful and reflective. It combines observations on Vanessa Bell’s fabric designs with psychological analyses of her relationship with Charleston and its other inhabitants. She captures the spirit and the development of the house as if it were a living being. She also draws an interesting socio-political contrast with her Christmas visits to the conservative house at Seend, which was the home of Clive Bell’s parents:

Even though it was at Seend that I celebrated my birthday – a birthday that belonged by rights to Charleston…the atmosphere of Victorian constraint could not have been tolerated for longer than the three or four days we spent there … it did not contain, as Charleston seemed to, the secret of creativity and renewal.

It’s also a paean of appreciation for her mother, as the presiding spirit of generosity and creativeness that permeated the house. This chapter is an interesting addendum to the account of her childhood that she provides in Deceived with Kindness.

Miraculously, the house survived the second world war and was kept in more or less its original condition. Quentin Bell (who grew up there) describes the practical difficulties and strategic frustrations of restoring the property. Fortunately for the historical records of English modernism, the house was completely refurbished, then purchased from its original owners, and is now governed by The Charleston Trust.

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Quentin Bell et al, Charleston: Past and Present: The Official Guide to One of Bloomsbury’s Cultural Treasures, London: Harvest Books, 1988, pp.180, ISBN 0156167735

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Twentieth century literature

Hip Hotels: New York

July 25, 2009 by Roy Johnson

glamorous, modern, and fashionable locations

Who would have thought that books on architecture and interior design would suddenly become fashionable. But that’s what’s happened with this Hip Hotels series, which made a big impact when it first appeared a couple of years ago. What are Hip Hotels? Well, Herbert Ypma defines them as Highly Individual Places, but I think it’s a bit more than that – because even traditional hotels can be individual. The selection he shows (and he claims to have stayed in them) are all very modern, usually minimalist, and the emphasis throughout is that they are located in very fashionable parts of the city – even if that means you’re in the Meatpacking District.

But he covers other parts of the city too. His survey goes from the Lower East to the Upper West Side, with Tribeca, SoHo, Midtown, and Times Square in between. The common features of most examples are dark brown modernist furniture, exposed brick or granite, soft downlighting, stainless steel bathroom fittings, no pictures, decorations, or knickknacks of any kind, a lot of square, black leather chairs and settees, and of course some stupendous views over the city’s roofscapes.

You get an eight page spread on each location. It goes almost without saying (these days) that the photography is of superb quality, and there are full contact and location details for each hotel – so you can phone in or log onto their web sites and book a room if you wish.

And it’s not just pretty pictures. He’s obviously well informed on the practical issues of architecture: he gives details of the planning permission, zoning regulations, and the acquisition of ‘air rights’ necessary for these largely high-rise buildings. He’s also good on the way in which the districts have changed their nature – turning from manufacturing to arts and fashion centres within a couple of generations.

These publications are normally big expensive coffee table books, but for this series they have been reduced in size to a more easily portable format. You lose some of the visual expansiveness of the originals, but Thames and Hudson call it their ‘travel format’. I suppose the idea is that you could take them along on your cultural pilgrimage. However, I should warn you, before you get too excited, that most of these places charge $300-plus minimum per night. Buy the book instead. It’s twenty-five times cheaper.

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Herbert Ypma, Hip Hotels: New York, London: Thames & Hudson, 2006, pp.192, ISBN: 0500286183

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How to work from home

September 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

working from home – living at work

Work from home – and survive

Lots of people work from home today. If you have a mobile phone, an email address, a broadband connection, and a laptop on your coffee table, nobody knows you’re a consultant dog on the Internet. You could be:

starting up your own business
switching from employed to ‘homeworking’
creating a job for yourself
downsizing from larger commercial premises
making money from your hobby

Making a start

Working from home can have plenty of advantages – and you can use all of them to make your life easier – and bring everything under your own control..

you don’t need to rent expensive offices
you can combine work with home life
you don’t have to travel to work
you’re your own boss
it’s tax deductible

This is a morale-boosting guide for anybody who wants to start their own business, or who harbours deep desires to be their own boss. Geoff Burch takes an entirely practical approach and shows how it can be done – by cutting your costs to a minimum and steering clear of get-rich-quick schemes. It will also be useful for all those folk who are facing early retirement and wondering what to do with themselves. Do your own thing – and walk tall!

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A Room of Your Own
Some people can work with very little in the way of equipment. But for most of us, if you’re going to be business-like, you’ll need a space of your own in which to work. Even if most of your activity is outside the house (working as a hairdresser, surveyor, plasterer, gardener) you need a space in the house which is your own.

The options are usually quite obvious. It could be a spare bedroom, an attic, or even the garage or a garden shed. In smaller spaces it might be one corner of a flat. The important thing is that you establish a space in which to conduct your business.

In his best-selling book on self-employment, Go It Alone! Geoff Burch describes the ultra minimalist approach were you have no office and no equipment at all. But even he agrees that you need to establish your own space – even if this is a psychological space.

Take a professional attitude and carve out a space for whatever you need. Your equipment could be no more than a few box files, a telephone, a computer, or folders full of papers. Keep this space for yourself, and don’t let it get mixed up with household matters. Don’t try to work off the edge of the kitchen table.

And Geoff Burch has another excellent piece of advice, which I firmly endorse. Don’t try to re-create a typical office environment. Why should you be surrounded by ugly metal filing cabinets and cardboard boxes full of rubbish. There are perfectly good storage solutions available at suppliers such as IKEA and Habitat which will visually enhance your environment, as well as being functional.

This is visual proof that you don’t need to be surrounded by empty cardboard boxes and metal filing cabinets. The examples in this beautifully illustrated book include quite small family homes which have been adapted to the demands of creating a working space within a domestic environment. Learn from the principles illustrated: no clutter, clean spaces, and a well organised room.

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The home office
But if it gets more serious and you want to establish a grown-up home office, you might want to create a professional work space. The basic requirements for a home office are a desk, a telephone, and storage for paperwork. Depending on the nature of your business, that’s probably the minimum. But if you want to give yourself a chance of being taken seriously, I would recommend two additions – a computer and a connection to the Internet. Since you’re reading this on the Internet, you’ve probably already got that.

The telephone
Get a dedicated line or use your mobile telephone number exclusively for your business calls. Don’t try to piggy-back off the household telephone line. Nobody will take you seriously if they ring up and are answered by a child who says “I’ll pass you to my Mum/Dad”. You might need a separate land line or a mobile number – but this is a small and worthwhile investment. Just look around you. Painters, plumbers, decorators, sales reps – everybody these days has a mobile phone.

Don’t even share a line with your spouse/partner/wife/husband (does that cover it all?) because when the phone rings, who answers it? Believe me, it’s a recipe for arguments and territorial squabbling. A separate telephone number is a minimal requirement for anybody wanting to be taken seriously in business. You’ll also benefit by having an answerphone. They’re cheap, and will cover any time you’re not in your office.

Email
The same’s true of an email address. Your customers will not be impressed if they are asked to reply to <johnandbarbara@fireside.Yahoo.co.uk>. Who is running the business – John, or Barbara? Do they both read the emails?

You should have an email address of your own – and it should have your business as a domain name. In other words <Barry@hotmail.com> could be anybody in the world. It gives you no identity, no distinction, and no business credibility. On the other hand, <info@bigservices.co.uk> looks more professional.

Fax
A fax machine used to be a badge of pride for anybody setting up their own business. But now you’ll find that it’s only the most old-fashioned concerns such as solictors who use them. Everybody else uses documents sent as attachments to email messages. So you can save on setup expense by ditching this cumbersome bit of Old Technology. All you need instead is an all-in-one printer-scanner-copier. At the time of writing these start at only thirty pounds.

Meeting clients
If you are working from home – from an office in the box room or even a corner of the spare bedroom – there comes a moment when you make contact with a potential client and need to meet up to discuss business. Ooops! It wouldn’t look good to invite Mr Big from Megabucks Ltd to your semi at 13, Oildrum Lane. You’re certainly not going to invite them back to your house to discuss business surrounded by unmade beds and children’s toys.

Don’t worry. This happens to everybody when they start up. But there are perfectly simple solutions. Either you offer to meet them on their premises (and you turn up on time, looking smart) or you invite them to meet in a public space in a location convenient to both of you. This could be a hotel lounge, a restaurant, or a bar somewhere convenient.

Working at Home shows interiors for writers, artists, musicians, and graphic designers. Most are minimalist design – plain walls and floors, no decoration, wood in teak or beech, lots of opaque tinted green glass, polished chrome fittings, simple halogen lights, chairs with tubular chrome legs, and giant settees in black leather. And the clutter which blights commercial offices has been purged – to stunning effect.

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Extra tips

Here are some tips for making your work space more professional, more visually appealing, and more productive. All the suggestions are easy to implement, and they’ll make an immediate improvement to your working life.

Straighten your bookshelves
If you have books, folders, box files, or any other items stored on open bookshelves – get them straightened up. Make the items stand up straight; get them in line; and eliminate any flopping and sloping items. Leave any empty spaces free or fill them with decorative objects, such as vases or ornaments.

Clear the desk
A cluttered desk is a recipe for constant irritation. Get rid of papers, memos, post-it notes, paper-clips, coffee mugs, photographs of the family, ‘amusing’ messages, and any other detritus from your working space. Be completely ruthless, and start from a clear working space. You’ll immediately feel better.

I know that there are exceptions. The painter Francis Bacon famously worked in a state of abject squalor. But you’re not Francis Bacon – and anyway most successful business people don’t work that way.

De-clutter regularly
Every day you will receive circulars, flyers, bills, advertising, and publicity materials through the post. Take one look at each item; decide if it’s important or if you want to keep it; and if not – throw it away. Don’t have a big IN-tray – otherwise that’s extra work to be done.

Live/Work is a collection of projects where living and working environments have been merged. The results prove that you can transform a house, a flat, or even an industrial site so that it becomes a very comfortable and attractive hybrid. Examples include the homes of architects, a painter, a photographer, a fashion designer, a restaurateur, a documentary film maker, a physical trainer, even a priest marrying people out of his own home-church.

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Live/Work

June 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

working at home: living at work

Home office living isn’t new. It used to be called ‘living above the shop’. That was a vertical separation of living and working space. But many people are now doing the same thing horizontally, with a home office, split-use rooms, or garden shed workshops. Deborah Dietsch has assembled a collection projects where living and working environments have been merged, and the results prove that with imagination you can transform a house, a flat, or even an industrial site so that it becomes a very comfortable and attractive hybrid.

Her examples include the homes of architects, a painter, a photographer, a fashion designer, a dance tutor, a restaurateur, a documentary film maker, a physical trainer, even a priest marrying people out of his own home-church.

The examples are all very well photographed – but don’t just look at the pictures in this book. There are lots of excellent suggestions and topics of design theory in the text. For instance, she argues that you should plan with the future and multi-purpose use in mind. Your work annexe can easily double up as space for occasional guests, and if things go pear-shaped commercially, you might want to let off a room or even an entire floor to compensate for lost income.

One feature I found interesting is that in each case there’s a summary of what lessons can be learned from the project. These could be summarised as follows:

Don’t be afraid of colour
Find beauty in industrial details
Rentals pay the mortgage
Re-use space for different purposes
Maintain a professional atmosphere
Keep living and workspaces separate

This corresponds with my own personal philosophy from hours and hours of studying design magazines and architectural source materials – and it’s this. No matter how outlandish or peculiar a design scheme, no matter how unlike your own taste it might be – there’s always at least one thing you can take away as a positive or a good idea from somebody else’s work.

She even mentions two ideas in her introduction that I’ve done myself recently. You should create some sort of separate entrance so that clients or business visitors don’t have to traipse through your home living space; and it’s useful to have a separate table or conference arrangement so that you can arrange proper business meetings.

I can also confirm from personal experience that it’s a good idea to be near services – the post office, supermarket, restaurants, cafe bars – so that you don’t feel isolated if you are setting up as a sole trader.

Remember too that all these ideas are very green. If you live and work in the same space, you are not driving to work. Your carbon footprint is lower, and you can offset some of your expenditure against tax.

Of course, the success of such projects depends on where you currently live and the size of your budget for setting up a work environment. The budget could actually be zero – but this book will still give you plenty of ideas on how to arrange the space you’ve got to bring your life and work into some form of unified design.

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Deborah K. Dietsch, Live/Work – Working at Home, Living at Work, New York: Abrams, 2008, p.319, ISBN: 0810994003

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Living in Provence

July 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

beautiful interiors and gardens from le midi

For anybody who knows Provence, the very names of the locations in this book seem like a musical evocation of the place: Roussillon, Eygaliers, Avignon, St Remy, Aix-en-Provence. And if you’ve been there you will know that Provence is a region drenched in warm colours, beautiful vegetation, soft contours, and rich textures – all of which are reflected in the traditional styles of the region. This photographic study of house interiors and gardens beautifully captures the magic of the place. I used to take my summer holidays there every year, and flicking through these pages made me yearn to go back to an almost heartbreaking extent.

There are all sorts of locations featured – everything from chateaux, the Grand Hotel Nord-Pinus at Arles, Paul Cézanne’s atelier in Aix, via elegant town houses, to restored villas which have been transformed into interior spaces of great beauty. Yet for all the rich glamour, there is nothing snobby about the collection. It includes old farmhouses, a hotel in Noves whose walls haven’t been decorated since the seventeenth century, and a troglodytic cave-like lean-to built into the side of a hill.

Having said that, most of these gaffs are of course more expensive than you and I could ever afford – but I have trained myself to curb envy and just pick up design tips from people who can afford to do anything. The rules which emerge here are to use restrained background colours, plus natural textures in stone, wood, and fabrics. The way to create an elegant and calming atmosphere is to remove all the clutter from overcrowded rooms, and let the eye be soothed by just one or two well-chosen pieces.

Every page is rich in images of sun-soaked patios and gardens, swimming pools, marbelled and tiled floors, period furniture, wood panelling, beautiful engravings, and rustic pieces of earthenware.

The colour photography is good, the print production values are excellent, and the commentary is is produced in English, French, and German. As publishers, Taschen don’t provide a lot of text or technical details, but in terms of value-for-money and visual interest you could not go wrong with a book like this.

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Barbara and Rene Stoeltie, Living in Provence, London: Taschen, 2005, pp.199, ISBN: 3822825271

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