Photo credit: Paul Aaron, ESTO, from the book "American Masterworks: Houses of the 20th and 21st Centuries" by Kenneth Frampton and David Larkin (Rizzoli, 2008)
We asked nine top-drawer men — architects, decorators, a bon vivant or two — one question: What room continues to inspire? As they flipped through their stacks of worn magazines and decorating tomes amassed through the years, and rifled through memories of trips to enchanting places, this mental excavation prompted divine inspiration. Herewith, nine rather wildly divergent spaces: a Paris salon, a casino entrance hall in Brazil, a former Nabisco box factory, and even a pencil-encrusted stairwell. Let’s hear it for the boys.
Rick RozasDesigner (Rick Rozas) “The first time I saw the photographs of the Paul Rudolph apartment [in New York City], I was reminded of my childhood bedroom! Everything was built-in: the long sofa — my brother and I had wall-to-wall beds — the wall of bookcases — we had a wall of bookcases — and a wall of shelving and display — we had the very same thing, and with two desks. It wasn’t until I was a lot older and saw the space again and realized how much had stayed with me, and I laughed at how much I thought it looked like my childhood bedroom — [only] ours was so traditional, down to the red-white-and-blue train, planes and cars wallpaper! But the Paul Rudolph space is timeless. Open, clean, pure. Everything having its place.”
Photo credit:Dan Forer, from the book "The Power Look at Home: Decorating for Men" by Egon von Fürstenberg and Karen Fisher (William Morrow and Company, 1980)
Sam SaladinoDecorator, Neiman Marcus associate“
The Power Look at Home: Decorating for Men by Egon von Fürstenberg and Karen Fisher presents interiors designed by men for men. In chapters like “The Individualist” and “Showmanship,” EVF blends his wit and pedigree into a knockout tome worthy of his princely taste. Powerful art, Miesian geometry and a stroke of grand gesture combine like fire, dust and air — mingled with water — to make the man! In this room, classic architectural details painted white anchor the stark modernity of the furnishings — the perfect backdrop for a glittering cocktail party unveiling the owner’s newest art acquisition.”
Lance Raney
Partner, Droese Raney Architecture“I tore it out years ago and I am not quite sure what or where it is. I love its haunting simplicity and weightlessness — like the caverns in my mind.”
Photo credit: Jaime Ardiles-Arce for Architectural Digest © 1981, Condé Nast Publications, from the book
"Michael Taylor: Interior Design" by Stephen M. Salny (W.W. Norton & Company, 2009)
George Cameron NashProprietor, George Cameron Nash showrooms“A residence the late Michael Taylor did for his client Charles Evans in New York City … simple materials like travertine and glass, hardly any background finishes, and absent “window dressing excess” … an enchanting and mysterious dwelling. Clean-lined banquette seating in no-color material contrasts several Louis XV fauteuil armchairs that are bleached as if petrified, and covered in no-color leather. Utilitarian tables are mere blocks of stone to hold and serve, and the high-polished black piano serves as an anchor. All can juxtapose art and sculpture. The art can be people and the piano — sound. I’m mesmerized by the sheer simplicity, strong architecture, and sublime approach to people existing in a space.”
Photo credit: Richard Barnes, from the book "Every Room Tells a Story," edited by Joseph Holtzman (D.A.P., 2001)
William BakerPartner, Jones Baker Interiors + Architecture“An obsessive, pencil-encrusted, three-story residential stairway that was published in
Nest magazine. I’m inspired by how these everyday, almost worthless objects were collected and composed in a myriad of ways to create this great space that must be a joy to traverse each day.”
Photo credit: Archives of Dorothy Draper, Inc., and Carleton Varney, from the book "In The Pink: Dorothy Draper,
America’s Most Fabulous Decorator" by Carleton Varney (Pointed Leaf Press, 2006)
George SellersSculptor, designer, plaster artisan “Dorothy Draper’s grand entrance hall to the casino at Palácio Quitandinha in Petrópolis, Brazil. The room is the perfect collision of the Baroque and the bereft!”
Photo credit: Marianne Haas, from the book "The Decorator" by Florence de Dampierre (Rizzoli, 1989)
John BobbittDecorator (Bobbitt & Company Interiors)“I’ve been fascinated with this room designed by Jacques Grange for an art collector in Paris ever since I first saw it 20 years ago. It is classical and at the same time sensual, very French, but almost American in its modernity. The art is subtle, the detailing in the upholstery and drapery is couture, and it all seems to orbit around the Régence-period desk, which is in itself a masterpiece of its kind.”
Photo credit: Eirik Johnson
Frank WelchArchitect (Frank Welch & Associates, Inc.), photographer, author“Philip Johnson’s Glass House is a single ‘room’ enclosed in glass. It never fails to inspire me, especially since it was published in 1949 while I was at Texas A & M College.”
Photo credit: From the book "Dia:Beacon" by Lynne Cooke and Michael Govan (Dia Art Foundation, 2003)
David Droese
Partner, Droese Raney Architecture“It’s at the Dia:Beacon museum in Beacon, New York, in the gallery that is dedicated to the Michael Heizer piece titled North, East, South, West, 1967/2002. The honesty and purity of the original structure — which was once a Nabisco box-printing factory — combined with all-natural light, is a fitting setting for Heizer’s negative-form sculpture. It has so much meaning, yet it is so pure, and so simple — which is why I find the space to be so poignant. On my last visit to Dia:Beacon, I had the chance to lie on the floor and look into the buried forms. The experience made my entire trip!”
Photo credit: Carla De Benedetti, from the book "Living Well: The New York Times Book of Design and Decoration," edited by Carrie Donovan (Times Books, 1981)
… and one of our ownRob BrinkleyCo-editor/home design editor, PaperCity
“I think about this space all the time. It’s in a palace in northern Italy. It is the chicest, most perfectly balanced blend of old and new, ever. Those Breuer chairs under that chandelier? That steel bookcase against that frescoed wall? This is my idea of high-and-low. It was decorated in 1977 by the architect Eleonore Peduzzi Riva, and it is exactly what I would do if I had a 16th-century villa — which I don’t. But still."