Believe It or Not
May 28, 2010
Text by Louis Postel   Photography by Michael Fein
âRun, itâs the Client from Hell,â says the meticulous young draughtsman to the office assistant. The Client from Hell breezes by them to corner a bow-tied gent we shall call Edmund S., the firmâs principle. E.S., as heâs known on Cape Cod and in Westport, Connecticut, wears a goatee with a purposeful Mephistophelean air. âEverything must go!â the client says. âItâs just awful. I need you to get rid of it.â E.S. raises an eyebrow, more amused than angry. Itâs not for nothing that heâs earned a reputation for being able to deal with clients every other architect has âfired.â At stake are thousands of tons of marble, thousands of hours of highly skilled labor. The assistant and the draughtsman listen as architect and client confer by the window. After a while, they hear E.S. say to the Client from Hell, âOh, my dear, you are so-oooh crazy!â more as sly compliment than criticism.
Itâs hardly news that client relations represent the single most important factor to design success. Who comes back a second time makes all the difference, especially in difficult times. What is news is that you donât necessarily have to be a gentle soul with a Mephistophelean goatee to make those relations work. You just need an understanding of what makes people tick. Psychologist Richard Schwartz at the Center for Self-Leadership in Chicago laid the foundation of this structure twenty years ago. Since then, his model has taken off, especially in New England for some reason. The old psychology would ask the designer to figure out what the client wants and ignore his or her nuttiness. In contrast, Schwartz suggests those nutty parts should be heard and respected. Maybe your client believes an Italianate roof welded to your Shingle Style design âhas got to be!â There is a reason for this view: the client has a belief, probably from childhood, that this particular design makes a home a sanctuary. That shag rug has to be in the corner because another client has some deep-seated belief that this is what coziness looks like. The stronger the emotion, the more you know itâs a belief expressing its often primitive interpretation of âhome as sanctuary.â So play nice with these beliefs.
Boston architect John Battle notes that people often seem to believe a high-tech home has to be modernist in style. âMy practice is more rooted in a traditional vocabulary, but technically itâs state of the art,â he says. Heâs working on a house on Lake Champlain in Vermont thatâs powered by tracking solar panels, a geothermal heat pump and an industrial-strength wind turbine that will generate enough juice to sell the excess back to the state. âThe owner went around to the abutters and said he was thinking of putting up a windmill for himself,â Battle says. âThey all said âHey, thatâs a pretty interesting idea!â â Up went a big turbine, and the neighbors all share the costs.
Derek Cascio, an industrial designer with Phillipsâ LED lighting unit Color Kinetics in Burlington, Massachusetts, and Sam Aquillano, an industrial designer with Bose in Framingham, Massachusetts, are co-founders of Design Museum Boston. âPeople believe industrial designers are sort of like corporate hairdressers,â Cascio says. âWeâre creating the museum to help educate the public about all design: industrial, interior, architectural.â Acquillano adds, âNew England is second only to the Bay Area in numbers of designers. In Massachusetts alone there are 44,500 designers: architects, interior designers, landscape, video games, fashion. Almost every aspect of our lives is impacted by a designer.â The museum will actually be a series of roving installations, the first of which is planned for Boston City Hall later this year.
Sometimes designers have their own long-held beliefs, like the one thatâs so convinced that âeverything across the pond is far more elegant!â Cheryl Hackett, author of the recent book Newport Shingle Style, says, âAfter the 1876 Expo celebrating the U.S. Centennial, architects such as McKim, Mead & White and Peabody and Stearns said, âWhat are we doing copying European architecture?â They became fascinated by the early settlers and went on tours sketching colonial homes. The result was what we call Shingle Style.â She cites Newportâs Isaac Bell Houseâa McKim, Mead & White workâwhere open floor plans take advantage of the sea breezes and ocean views. âItâs so playful, so inventive,â she says. And just as beautiful as anything European. Hackett is now working for The Newport Collaborative, whose âOut to Seaâ residence at Carnegie Abbey (built by Woodmeister Master Builders) is deservedly on the bookâs front cover.
Thereâs a common belief that you need to hire a local architect, one steeped in the local vernacular and one who knows all the other playersâcontractors and subsâin the area. However, Morehouse MacDonald and Associates, of Lexington, Massachusetts, run contrary to that belief. Says John MacDonald, âWeâre doing jobs all over: Scottsdale, Arizona ( a âtweenerâ sort of Spanish colonial adobe meets Yankee), an Italianate manor house in Naples, a barn in Vermont, a Victorian cottage on a lake in New Jersey.â In many cases, these are repeat clients who are using the firm for their retirement or vacation homes. âThe fact that weâre willing to get on an airplane and go to them makes our clients happy. They trust the relationship theyâve built with us,â MacDonald says. âItâs nice for us, too. Bostonâs pretty competitive; it seems more easygoing in the West and South.â As for choosing the right builder, MacDonald calls the AIA for the names of top builders in the area, then interviews them, checks their references and so on. âIt works out pretty well,â he says.
Forget about the notion that âclassic New Englandâ is all about a cottage look in serene neutrals. Tracy Davis of Urban Dwellings in Bath, Maine (where you can hear sturgeon splashing in the Kennebec outside her office window), says her clients are telling her, âWeâre done with cottage style. We want modern and give me color. Donât give me anything white!â So, for example, she says, âWe just did a mudroom with built-in boxed seating in a rich wenge-like finish inspired by Japanese Tansu benches. The cushions are in spiced pumpkin as is the cabinetry along the wall. We graded the hues of pumpkin cabinetry, so as you move from left to right they darken. The wallpaper is in a large paisley in orange and chocolate.â
Designer Linda Stimson of Inner Visions Interiors in Lexington, Massachusetts, is seeing more requests for color, too, especially from younger clients. She writes from her Blackberry: âI am seeing people under thirty painting entire rooms in fuchsia with white and indigo accents. Also deep rust, or red rooms for warmth and security.â
A particularly stubborn belief about people who work in design is that theyâre either right brained (slightly weird, creative) or left-brained (analytical, logical) but not both. Architect Stephanie T. Horowitz of ZeroEnergy Design, Boston, and one of New England Homeâs 5 Under 40 award winners for 2010, begs to differ. âOur work takes a much more holistic approach,â she says. âThe design is both beautiful and informed by our calculated approach to building performance; it’s the complete package. My firm is of the belief that the beauty and brains of our design are inextricably linked.â
Now thatâs a belief we can hold onto.
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