Horizontality

Originally built in the 1960s, this two-story West Indies style plantation home had been acquired and extensively renovated by a contractor as a “flip-house,” before being sold to our bachelor client, whose few furnishings served as a clean palette from which to create a fresh new design.  

When our client first viewed the home, he was particularly drawn to the home’s re-salvaged antique beamed ceilings, original to the home and arguably the structure’s most distinctive feature.   However, our client believed the contractor, in an attempt to modernize the floor plan, had removed far too many walls, resulting in one large single room completely void of the character found in homes with defined living spaces.  Sadly, upon entering the home, guests immediately landed in the middle of a sea of open space.  Our client had no sense of where his dining room pieces should be sited and how the furniture might relate to the space designated for his living room or the open kitchen.  

While we certainly believe open floor-plans have their place, its popularity has caused them to be overly used as a one-size-fits-all architectural approach to modernizing homes, one that is clearly not appropriate for every dwelling.   To this end, our client tasked us with come with a way of creating visual delineation between the spaces without erecting floor to ceiling walls.  

To accomplish this feat, we installed a large wooden louvered screen in the middle of the space to suggest a living room on one side of the screen, with dining table on the other side.  

The diminutive area intended to be the dining space was far too tiny to accommodate even the smallest dining table.  Instead, we re-purposed this space into a game room by designing a recessed paneled accent wall and suspending divider curtains from an existing beam to create an intimate room within the larger open space.  Finally, a large center hall table was floated in the middle of the open space near the entry doors to suggest one had entered a proper foyer.  house a proper dining table and chairs so we fictitiously “suggested” a small game room by installing a recessed paneled accent wall and suspended divider curtains from its original beams.  Finally, a large center hall table was floated in the middle of the open space near the entry doors, to suggest a proper foyer.

As we began to develop a design narrative for the new furnishings and fabrics, we noticed a strong horizontality in the design of the few pieces our client already owned being incorporated into the new design scheme.  We decided to expand upon this vocabulary by constantly repeating and re-introducing horizontal lines of the design of the fabrics and furnishings we selected, as well as the architectural details we added to the structure.  

The contractor had used a cool gray for the kitchen cabinets so we embraced the color, using it as a launching off point for the selection of fabrics, finishes and upholstery, all executed in varying shades and textures of cool gray for all the public spaces.  

The contractor’s greatest contribution was the addition of a large master bedroom suite where we were starting from scratch with the decoration. We injected a classic “Ralph Lauren” aesthetic into the space achieved largely through the use of men’s formal suiting fabrics and colors but infused it with mid-century modern furniture pieces, creating an interesting design dialogue.   

For the master bathroom, we designed and installed a painted wood horizontal slatted accent wall behind a freestanding tub to give it more architectural weight and significance.  The addition of new lighting fixtures as well as an antique Oushak rug, were installed to tie into the elegantly classic, yet masculine haberdashery feel of the master bedroom suite.