Two Minutes with Robert Gurney

Hi everyone, happy First Friday!  Today we have a great interview with Robert Gurney, FAIA.  Robert Gurney has become one of our favorites.  His beautiful use of materials and timeless designs have our full attention; not to mention, he's a good friend of our program.  Today he shares valuable insight on his design process and methods.  Take a look at his website for more projects.  Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy the interview.

VT:  The design of your residential projects explores varying levels of scales, from the overall design of a space into the extraordinary detail of stairs, for example.  What drives the design intent of each project to create schemes with a sense of unity?

RG:  The site drives all of the projects; this is our starting point.  If we have a beautiful rural or suburban site, the building tends to be more focused and integrated physically with the site, not visually.  The projects that are more urban projects - apartments, and row-houses (which often don’t have beautiful vistas) - tend to be more inwardly focused.  These projects have more of an emphasis on the materials and the detailing, and how it all goes together.  On projects that have larger sites and beautiful views we sometimes lose sight of the detailing.  With that said, we strive to bring the same level of detail into all of our projects.  In urban projects, a rooftop deck or a terrace above a garage can easily integration with the outside; it can really be strong.  Experience with differently scaled projects and varied locations contribute to the success of each new project.   

VT:  You mention how your projects are designed to be timeless.  What is your definition of timelessness, and what advice can you offer young designers who aim to create impactful, memorable, and timeless spaces?

RG:  I think an important part of this is the materials we use.  Whether it’s the exterior of the building or the interior of the building, we use a lot of natural wood, natural stone, steel, and glass; we try to stay away from a lot of color.  Color typically comes from the material.  Also, color can come through finishes and things that are changeable, but the things that you are not going to change are millwork, flooring, cabinetry, etc.  Not only do we try to implement materials that are natural and familiar, but ones that what we think will look good in ten, fifteen, or fifty years.  A beautiful stone wall is going to look beautiful in two hundred years.  It's also how you respond to the context both in terms of scale and back again to materials, and how you sit the building on the site.  These contribute to the buildings timelessness, and how it will stand the test of time.

VT:  The uses of natural elements are expressed beautifully within your portfolio.  Are your uses for natural elements project specific, or do you have an underlying philosophy as a designer that can be found from project to project?

RG:  I try not to use the same materials over and over again, but if you find a beautiful material, repetition isn't a good reason to not use it.  Sometimes clients will see a certain project and a material that you use, and they want to use it in their project.  There are some projects that have a lot of mahogany and maple, and other projects that have a lot of white oak and walnut; this reflects how we pair materials.  We are using a lot of natural materials while trying to mix it up as much as we can; at the same time, I’m not sure that we fall into the idea that everything you do has to be the newest, latest thing.  I would rather do what I am comfortable with, and do it well.  There’s an interesting balance between materials that we know work well and stand the test of time, and the incorporation of new materials.  In terms of sustainability, we try to make sure all of the woods that we use are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified, and use reconstituted or LEED certified materials; we are really sensitive to this.  

Steelcase Prize Winners

We are pleased to announce the winners of our first ever Steelcase Prize.  The Steelcase Prize is offered once a year to a graduating senior; by calling for a balance between design excellence, service, and leadership, the prize recognizes our most well rounded and strongest senior.  The prize is formatted to be awarded to one recipient, however, this year we had two equally distinguished finalists.

Our two recipients are Hannah Chessman (left) and Denise Pendleton (right), along with Janet Davis of Steelcase (center).  A special thanks to Janet Davis for her generosity and involvement with Virginia Tech.

Congratulations, ladies! 

April 13: Mark Boone

Mark Boone, graduate of Virginia Tech and generous supporter of the Interior Design program, is the President and CEO of Mark Boone, Inc. and Mimi London, Inc. He is known for his luxurious and organically influenced interior design. Both firms are located in Los Angeles, California; however, Mark Boone Inc., focuses on residential design, while Mimi London focuses on the creation of furniture that is represented around the country by to-the-trade showrooms.  Recently, Mark Boone was recognized as an “AD 100” leading designer.

Website

Two Minutes with Min | Day's Jeff Day

Hello, and happy First Friday everyone!  We have a great interview for you today, one that has been highly anticipated within our studio.  Jeff Day, of Min | Day, shares special insight on his firms' approach to projects, and the meaningful ways they think about design.  Min | Day has a compelling way of articulating their ideas through interior design, architecture, and graphic representation.  Please check take a look and familiarize yourselves with this firm if you haven't already; the projects that come out of this office are beautiful.  Be sure to take a look at their website to view their impressive portfolio.  Enjoy!

VT:  Your projects tend to have a cohesive blend of color, material, and pattern.  How does your design process help inform decisions to achieve such harmonic and graphic uses of each of these elements? 

JD:  The best word to describe our design process is "evolving". Each project begins with an exploration of site, client and program and we often start designing without a clear conceptual point of departure. We believe that conceptual rigor arises from the design process itself - concept does not precede design conception. Often conceptual ideas emerge from responses to a specific project's needs or conditions, and when a strong conceptual idea begins to emerge, we massage the overall design to be consistent with this concept, or at least to complement it. We are not interested in the abuse of conceptual ideas to the point at which they become one liners. Furthermore, concepts do not necessarily carry narrative or didactic intent - it is usually not necessary for a user to understand the intent behind a project. For example, at Pocket Gems in San Francisco the custom floor tile color pattern is a loose index of the program and uses of certain areas in the plan. The visitors and staff in the company may not be able to articulate this, but they read it at a subconscious level. At the Okoboji House, the white walls and ceilings of the public areas are intended to deflect attention to the exterior views and the art collection but as rooms get smaller, interior colors intensify. On the continuum between public and private, color intensifies with intimacy, so small bathrooms are the most brightly colored spaces in the house. These spaces shift attention from the exterior lakeshore site, which is quite beautiful, to an intensive feeling of interiority (color is applied to all surfaces in a room volume). Again, the thinking behind this does not need to be consciously articulated by the inhabitants, but we think they will feel the intent and understand the house as a site of different phenomenal experiences. One last point about this house - there are several other formal, spatial and material ideas at work that are not all related to what I just described. We believe that architecture and the one's experiences of it can be multivalent, carrying several sometimes contradictory impulses.  

VT:  Your body of work is consistently unique and seemingly innovative.  What would you say are the underlying interests among each of your clients, and how do these interests allow you to achieve such beautiful and well detailed projects?

JD:  The uniqueness of each of our projects stems from differences between the specific conditions of the project at hand: the desires of the client, the site, the program, the budget at times, but also our own current preoccupations. We try to approach each project with an open mind and we try to convince our clients to do the same. By being as open as possible we find the work is fresh, interesting and as you say, unique. I understand "consistently unique",  to mean "always new" and "fresh". Or projects do not have the consistency of form and material as, say Richard Meier, but as a set they speak about an office that is constantly evolving. But I don't think it is possible to be completely open to the new in each project. The one common factor that cannot be denied is ourselves. We bring our own experiences and interests and these add threads of continuity through the work such as our interest in landscape, the effect and playfulness of color & materials, digital fabrication and advanced techniques used alongside more traditional processes, pattern and mathematical complexity, contemporary art, and so on. 

To achieve strong projects takes strong clients and we have been fortunate to have clients who were good collaborators. They respect our work and our process but they bring their own ideas too. The best clients are the ones that push us to do our best work.

VT:  The drawings and diagrams that you present with many of your projects are beautifully crafted and technically elegant.  How do your diagrams influence the craft and formation of a space (or vice versa) during the design process?

JD:  Of course many diagrams come after a project is complete and these act to help interpret the finished work. But we do often consider our emerging design projects diagrammatically - as a set of relationships and spatial conditions that begin life with lots of possibility and promise but not definitive form. The is the best definition of a diagram comes from Deleuze who said the diagrams carry the possibility of fact but are not facts themselves. In other words, an architectural diagram embodies a more essential idea about a project that could manifest in different ways in a completed project. The Okoboji House for example has a simple diagram of spaces that relate the house its site and views - we call these spatial tubes or blinders that guide the experience of the site. The diagram is abstract, but its power exists as material reality in the built project.

I feel it is important to discuss the context of the diagrams first but the drawings themselves are carefully crafted with a consistency that we like to maintain from project to project. It may be a bit old fashioned, but we believe that well-crafted drawings (and these include construction drawings) help enforce strong craft in the final project.

VT:  The architecture in your portfolio appears to be carefully calculated.  What are the primary concept generators that commonly help to form your architecture, and does the interior program influence this process? 

JD:  As I described above we prefer to allow concepts and architectural ideas to emerge from the circumstances of the project itself. We  are careful not to bring too many preconceptions to a project and we try to get our clients to approach the task with the same openness and inquisitiveness. For commercial work spaces, for example, we would rather begin the conversation with our clients by talking about what they do and how they work rather than talking about what kind of desk they like. We want to get at the core of their needs and not let normative work arrangements or the ad hoc circumstances of a previous work place cloud the discussion of new possibilities. Our commercial clients, especially those in the software and creative fields are pretty savvy about this and usually know the importance a unique fit is to the culture and processes of their companies.