In a practical sense, where does one begin and the other end?
For a custom-designed residence, what level of detail would/should an architect/building designer provide and what would an Interior Designer provide? If one hired an architect, might one still need an interior designer?
Replies
I'll bite. There is no answer. Seen wonderful exteriors designed by archy's. Inside sucks.
Seen wonderful houses designed by interior designers. Exteriors put me to sleep.
Sometimes, there are special people. Doesn't matter what their speciality is. They get it.
Problem is finding those special people. If I had to chose, guess I'd take the wonderful interiors. No reason except that one spends more time indoors living, rather than outdoors looking.
ShelleyinNM
On large projects with large budgets the design would be done as a team, usually with both an architect and an interior designer, and possibly others like a structural engineer, soils engineer, landscape designer, kitchen designer, and so forth.
I think it depends on the budget, and also on the skills of the individual(s). Some architects can do interiors well, and some can't. Same the other way around.
It's a good topic to discuss with the architects you are considering.
>It's a good topic to discuss with the architects you are considering.
I'm a building designer (can't say "architect" without that license). [And for those who don't know, I only design curved concrete residences.] I'm trying to figure out how far to take my services. Legally, I cannot do landscape design, and can't do interior decorating. Each of those are licensed professions, at least in some states. I'll do space planning for kitchens, for example, but the typical client will have the exact cabinet arrangement selected by and with their cabinet provider. I don't get into whether they use 3- or 4- drawer cabinets, or roll-out vs shelves, etc, and I don't charge for the time it'd take to do that, either. I'll provide for a bookshelf, but not specify the exact shelf arrangement. I specify shape, but not color. I don't design furniture. Know what I mean?
I see a variety of shows on Discover, HGTV, etc--Monster House, Designer Guys, etc--and while they're often more exaggerated than my typical client would appreciate, they make me want to give the client an idea of the possibilities. I've been stopping my house designs closer the drywall than the drapes, if that analogy makes sense. Doing more would take more time, and time is money, etc. But does that leave an opportunity to include an interior designer, or an interior decorator, and what's involved, and where to draw the line on who does what? Ideally, I'd love to find someone who could take the spaces I design, and draw in the more detailed elements that would take the rather sterile computer renderings I do and flesh them out more in the way the client will after the carpenters vacate the house.
Any of that make sense?
Here's an example of how far I go...
If I had the budget I would have an architect or building designer that specializes in the style I want to build in do the space planning and exterior, a lighting designer to do what I consider one of the most important elements of design magic - create the shadow and light play that makes a space live, an interior designer to pull it all together, a landscape architect to marry the outdoor and indoor spaces and about twelve or thirteen of the top craftsman and artists available to give input and make it all happen.
Oh yea, and a general contractor that knows how to make them all get along... he, he, he.
Most budgets only allow for one or two of the above professionals in the design phase. A qualified architect or building designer and a good interior designer generally make for the best combination if they work together. When only one design professional is in the budget the architect or building designer has to know enough about all of it to realize the client's dream.
As far as architects go, IMHO a firm with several architects working together generally does a better job with the overall project than a one man show. My firm has three architects, myself as the intern, and a couple of engineers along with the support staff. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. While each of us have our projects where we are the "designer in charge" we take advantage of each others strengths to pull it all off.
Your designs are some of the coolest buildings I've ever seen. You are a specialist in taking a bland old "snowball on a hill" image of dome homes to a new and exciting level. My only concern with you deciding to extend your services is that every moment you spend working out the details of interior design, lighting, and landscaping you are no longer free to do what you do like no one else I know.
If you can stay busy doing what you do better than just about everyone else out there you will be at a real advantage. If you have a few too many vacant moments in the schedule, by all means, learn, grow and expand. When the demand for your area of specialty picks up you can always scale back and focus on the bread winner skills that you are well known for.
All that to say, a really good one man band is fun to watch, and can sound pretty good, but nothing makes music like a room full of artists holding individual instruments they each know like the back of their hand.
Edited to add: nothing makes more awful racket than a room full of musicians that don't know how to work together either. There are a lot of advantages to individual designers too. Good thread!
Kevin Halliburton
"Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men." - Solomon
Edited 5/5/2004 6:55 pm ET by Wrecked Angle
Kev,
I don't WANT to expand to doing the other stuff myself. I don't feel a particular aptitude as we get closer and closer to the decorating side of the spectrum. Shoot, there's a reason my house is mostly shades of gray! I'm just trying to better understand the spectrum. Ideally, I'd be able to find someone with the complimentary interior design skills and figure out a reasonable business arrangement. It'd be nice to have someone to exchange ideas with--the worst part of working alone. Just haven't been sure what to look for.
Jim,
It sounds like you are close to what I do in the design part. I told my latest customers that if they wanted to bring on interior designers, the soon, the better, so we could work together, because I don't do colour. It is too much an area of opinion and (mis)guided taste. I make suggestions and let them have the "fun"
From your question, I think the ideal is to have someone you work well with and do referals.
from the legal side, interior design is one of the last great unregulated fields in this world AFAIK
from the practical side, I have seen them who only do colour and drapes but also there are some who like to add dormers, move windows, dictate crown and oddities.
The good ones do understand light, space, colour and form very well, and end up with very comfortable spaces. Others simplyfollow the trends of the moment.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
>It sounds like you are close to what I do in the design part.
Yes.
>because I don't do colour.
LOL...In "true confessions" mentality, I'm really jealous of people who can look at a room, say "Hunter Green" and "Dusty Rose", and actually make it work!
>From your question, I think the ideal is to have someone you work well with and do referrals.
Yes, sounds like it. I do that with my engineer, and it works great. Part of the reason I'm wrestling with this is I've never met a real life living and breathing interior designer, so I haven't been able to ask what they do and how they do it and how they interact with the building designer. And then add to that finding someone intrigued by the particulars of thin shells...
Have you actually had an interior designer on one of your projects? How'd it work? What did they do? Was the house better for it?
Yes, I have worked with several. There are interior designers and there are interior designers though.
Some are girls who went to liberal arts college and took a general arts degree and think they have good taste. They are often working in or associated with aretail store and work on commission and are really more sales staff with halfway decent advice than real designers.
Others have come up through and been there and done that.
One I worked with was Ms I Taylor from Colfax and Fowler in London. They are one of the premier houses in the world for this sort of thing. After WW2, there were a lot of damaged building in England and little money to work with, but people wanted to live in places that reflected the good feelings of having beaten back evil. C&F pioneered a lot of ways to use colour and fabric top make things look ten times better than they were. Shades of colour applied in the right way can enlarge a room, lighten a room, make a room more cozy feeling, or welcome a visitor, without necessarily touching the structure itself.
IDs help people pick out art for walls, light fixtures, carpet or runners, furniture, etc so as to make it all work together.
Some have good taste and others need their taste buds washed out with soap IMO. But when it is a matter of taste, it is the customer who rules. In the photo section of Breaktime, I psoted a few pictures focusing on some things re IDs on a job I did. It was a year ago or thereabouts and I think I named the thread "Those darn interior designers" or something to that effect. They did a fair job overall but a couple of things offendded my own sensibilities. One of them has done other work that is primo but his partner had a free hand for some whimsey that left the owner wondering where all the money went.
That brings up another sidebar. Some of these guys plan to spend a third as much decorating as I do building the place. They can be worth it and listening to them can be enlighteneing. I just saw a job where there were high ceilings in a narrow room. They had installed a dropped crown a couple feet below the ceiling and painted the lower wal for the first nine feet below it a cream sort of tone and the wall and ceiling above a sort of midnight blue, so the high vacant ceiling disappeared but in a majestic way, like under a midnight sky, so it lowered the ceiling and enlarged the room.
I also worked with another who had been many years with a top name in NYC and learned at his knee. This guy got $175/hr and wes worth every penny for the type homes we worked on. Those adresses on fifth ave and seventh avenue require big bucks to sustain!
Architectural digest is more an ID rag tan an archy mag, IMO bu tmost of these IDs have been published there. I don't suppose that hurts their bottom line any.
The way many of my clients find their ID is to ask their friends who did this house etc. When they find a sense of taste that they like, they make the call. I have never engaged one myself. It has always been the owner who brought the ID in to the job, often too late, which is why I encourage them to do it asap. once the framing is done, and the plumbing roughed in, it is pretty hard to drop in some large marble for the bathroom floor.
If I were in your shoes and wanting to be able to do referals or work hand in hand, i would follow my taste and inquire sources. The thing about "working with" is a hard one for this field. There are a lot of prima donas, even amoung the opnes who aren't that good. The good ones do travel for their jobs a lot.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
In many fields, perhaps more so in the arts, quality (which includes aesthetics, of course, in the decorative arts) depends so much on the individual talents of the practitioner.
I had an especially revealing experience with that last year. Over the years in and around St. Lawrence County, New York about a dozen buildings have caught my eye as being particularly attractive. One day I went to a home show / trade fair sort of exhibition. Stopping at an architect's booth I noticed one of my favorite buildings pictured. Perusing the display further, I discovered that about two thirds of the buildings that I really thought were well designed were all designed by him! Talent, and taste, really are individualized.
Ahhh - I see. I thought you were kicking around the idea of doing it all.
In my limited experience working with Interior Designers I think the best time to bring them on board is somewhere between the point where you move from the schematic design phase and the completion of the working drawings. That lets you concentrate on space planning and getting the floorplan nailed down and still allows for a shift of a wall here and there to work in additional design elements.
The building designer generally handles the complete building shell, interior partitions, exterior material selection and they usually decide what finish materials will be used without calling out specific details such as color. Cabinet finishes and other materials that need to be finished before install are generally decided on prior to release of drawings for bid.
Mechanical, electrical, site and structural are generally handled by engineers on the large scale commercial work we do but the building designer generally handles most if not all of that on residential. The end result of the building designer's labors are a set of working drawings and specs that can be bid and built from without pinning down the specifics on the primarily aesthetic elements.
We generally specify "equal to" a specific brand of finish and call for color samples, or other selection samples, to make the final color board from. The building usually has sheet rock going up before we nail down the specifics on a color chart for final client approval.
I would think the Interior designer would start to get pretty busy on a collaborative effort somewhere around that same virtual building point in the design phase. Hope that helps a little more.Kevin Halliburton
"Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men." - Solomon
Thank you. That clears some things up.
>Ahhh - I see. I thought you were kicking around the idea of doing it all.
If you ever wanna know what I'm _gonna_ do, listen to what I say I _won't_ do! Ha ha ha. Right after writing this, I had a revelation about interior design. And then I had a specific idea about a tricky project. So of course I had to spend a day rendering it, be/c the client couldn't tell from just a description. So much for not doing it all.
The good news, though, is that the client loved it. It was something for the kid's room--4 kid's bedrooms in all--and when they showed the rendering to the kids, I was told they were all fighting over who'd get that room. Now THAT'S a welcome reaction to a design!
My revelation about interior design was...focus on a theme, and the rest is easy (or easier). When I do the house structure, it's such an amorphous beast, that I don't really have themes. Not gonna do a victorian dome, or a greek revival dome, or a french chateau. Southwestern, maybe. But they aren't so much thematic as a rule. To bring pizzaz to the inside, I really had to find a theme (for wont of a better word) to drive the creativity, instead on context-less hope for inspiration. That's what they do on Monster House, etc, and while those are over-the-top, they still offer useful lessons.
So, thanks for the discussion that lead to the path that lead to an insight.
in my thinking, that is exactlyt right. When you knoiw the overall theme and fuinction or goal, the house almost designs itself.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
"Overall" themes are primarily a mid-western trend.Kevin Halliburton
"Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men." - Solomon
Thanks for the hint, Cloud, now I think I know where I am going - to bring the outside in. However I want my computer catch-all room to be a blend of modern and old, and the kitchen and bath and they all have quite different potential. Much appreciated and now much to investigate!
Why not go to some home remodeling shows and pick their brains? You may even discover some of the questions to ask by eavesdropping on some other conversations and hear of some ID's in the style you are thinking of. Modernistmom-Very cool to hear about the mid-century modern house. Who was the architect? Did you furnish it with period pieces or others that just blend well?"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Edited 11/21/2004 12:21 am ET by highfigh
As a registered Interior designer, I feel I must offer my two cents. Architects design the exterior shell with interior designers doing the inside working around the structural requirements given by the engineer. Both work in tandem to achieve the clients goals. Architects are not trained or technically licensed to do interior design just as designers are not trained or licensed to do architecture. But both professions have knowledge of the other. If you want an interior environment that reflects the user then hire the appropriate professional. Inteior Designers do not just pick out colour schemes! That is what a decorator does! As an Interior Designer I spend 90% of my time on projects doing working drawingsand details and often only 10% on colour. All the space planning, orientation, cabinet details, material choices, lighting and electrical plans and specs are all of what I do. The only things I`m not liscenced to do are of course structure and mechanical. Everything else is included in the set of working drawings for tender. This confusion between designer vs. decorator vs. architect is a constant battle for professional designers. In my experience, not because of the architects, but because of the builders perpetuating the idea that designers are just decorators.
There is a vast difference, that I think if more widely know, could make all of our jobs easier and more importantly, more profitable!
Hoping to dispel the myth,
Edited 11/30/2004 12:54 pm ET by ecodesign
You know, when I read about those fine Arts and Crafts architects who designed everything in the house right down to the fabric and the furniture, I say an internal 'Yuck'. Sure it looks good, but so do some museums I've gone to. My life is more mixed than that. I can see hiring an interior designer to work with me, using pieces that I already have and love, but I have more mental difficulty picturing an architect doing so. Likewise, for a structure I would want somebody who knows about structures, such as an architect or a building designer. So no, while I can see a partnership between the two, my uninformed opinion is that they have differing, though overlapping, functions.
We hired an architect because our housing type was rare (mid-century modern) was totally outside the design experience of the builders in our part of the country (Northeast). If we lived in a colonial or victorian, we would have had many more ways to approach the project.
A builder would have given us a more market driven result, and we really wanted to enhance the modernist atchitecture of the house (a very Neutra-esque house built in 1967.)
So I guess I'm saying the decision may be driven in many way by the housing style.
Edited 5/7/2004 12:42 pm ET by ModernistMom