Ideal Live/Work Space: Interior Designer Laura Clayton Baker
In April this year we took a tour of Laura Baker’s home office. As fas as I was concerned, it was pretty ideal, so I was very interested to see what she would come up with when presented with the central question of this new series: What is your ideal home office?
Laura: I’ve always gotten my best ideas sitting in coffee shops drawing in notebooks, away from the forced environment of a desk, so I’d like to find a way to free up my mind when I’m in my office. One thing I think would help would be a very large, perhaps 9’ x 9’ blackboard or whiteboard, so that I could design furniture and cabinetry full size. (See photo below).
The idea of getting to draw at that scale really appeals to me. I could stand back and really get a sense of the scale, and wouldn’t be wasting any paper to achieve that. I’d photograph the designs to document them before making working drawings. A number of years ago I visited the John Soane Museum in London. One of the many brilliant ideas Soane, who was an architect, employed, was a painting room where the paintings were hung on panels that hinged open to reveal more paintings behind (picture below). In this way he tripled his wall space. I think that would be a great way to work on presentations…different projects could be opened or closed as needed, and if the panels were magnetic or cork fabrics could be pinned onto the boards as well as drawings. I’d like the front of these panels to be painted cabinetry so it could all disappear. I’d choose a palette of whites to function as a neutral background.
This picture (below) is the fantasy version of the interior I’d like to have…it’s Frederic Mechiche’s home in Paris. I’d keep the furnishings very simple and have large work surfaces for drafting, making models, and sorting materials. I’d need lots of cabinets for samples of fabrics, building materials, books and so on. I’d be happy to have all the furniture resources scanned onto an external hard drive however.
Although this is a fantasy of what I’d like, thinking about it has made me realize that at least the blackboard idea is quite attainable, and I may start with that in my actual office.