Summer is my season for being in an ambiguous place, not in, not out. Sounds like spatial androgyny, doesn’t it. Even though, designers are realizing this third place as a hybrid of in and out - the intra-room - where we relax, entertain, dine, listen to music, meditate, star-gaze and become enveloped by the warmth of a fire.
I vividly recall two words from biology that describe this place best, and sound almost culinary while trying to explain it. Osmosis is movement in and out and back again. A designer’s spatial divide is like that, a semi-permeable membrane where living out is the same as living in, fully extending their client’s lifestyle through the transition with such transparency.
Whether doors, canopy or window, that transition can be dressed the same way a couturier dresses the feminine form, with diaphanous sheer, gauzy texture and diffused temperament. The result can be what the great artist James Whistler called, ‘places to stir imagination and mold moods.’
As this Spring turned to Summer, I was reconnected again in New York with Michael Wollaeger of Luxe Magazine for his magazine’s-sponsored panel discussion on the market for outdoor furnishings, fabrics and fashion.
We ventured out in to the new portfolio of products from water features, sound and lighting systems, cooking technology, fire features and lush decorative fabrics and furniture. That portfolio is all yours to inspire your clients.
Since so many of them are on ‘staycation,’ now is really the best time to present design for outdoor as another dimension of your abundant value to them. Their residences mean so much more to them now. They have moved on from ‘I need it’ and ‘I want it’ to ‘it’s worth it to us.’ Having taught them how to live well inside, you can design for them to live as well outside -- so worth it.
My inspired outdoor could be a teepee on the prairie, souk in Marrakech, or loggia in Venice. But for now, meet me at the beach.
Steve Nobel
Founder and principal of NOBELINKS, a consulting practice specializing in the luxury markets for home furnishings and interior design, worldwide.
