The Palo Alto Hill House has a beautiful home office (below). Are you finding home work spaces are much in demand these days? Absolutely. Is there anyone who doesn’t work at home, at least some of the time? The Palo Alto house is a project in which I learned a lot because one of the clients uses a wheelchair.  The house was on three inaccessible levels so the challenge was to tie it all together. I like to think that the solution not only solved a problem but made for a much more interesting house in the end.

With architectural projects that span the country and the globe and your work as creator of the City Secrets guides how do you strike a balance between work and the rest of your life? I spend a great deal of time with my family.  My wife is the managing editor of our publishing company, Fang Duff Kahn Publishers. My daughter often comes to the office in the afternoon to do her homework, and if I need to work late, I can work from home. I do have to travel but I am pretty efficient about it.

What inspires you in your work? In our publishing business it is the desire to create curated content while lauding the overlooked or under-appreciated, whether they be sites, books or movies.  We have a remarkable list of contributors that include, among hundreds of others, eleven Pulitzer prize recipients, ten Oscar winners, one Nobel laureate, six MacArthur “Geniuses,” two poet laureates, one race car driver, Miss Manners, Mario Batali, Frank Stella, Martin Scorsese, Ed Koch, and Pete Seeger.

In architecture, I am inspired by trying to solve — in the most fluid and elegant way that I can — the intricacies of the project created by the reality of the program, the site, the budget and most importantly, those more ephemeral hopes and ideas that my clients often find hard to articulate.  I take it as a compliment when someone looks at the finished product and assumes that there was no other solution.  The architects that inspire me are Borromini, Stirling, and Corbusier.  As different as they may appear to be, they are the same in so many ways. Their influence has less to do with the style of their work and more to do with the way they so beautifully resolve all the pieces that make up a building.

In the last decade your firm has grown to over 30 architects, designers, technical and administrative staff. When you were starting out did you plan on heading up a firm such as this? When I started out, I did not imagine heading up a firm. I studied architecture out of a passion for architecture in itself. I did not have a vision for how I would practice in the future, although I am very happy with my practice and love working with everyone in the office.

Above, top and below: The 3,000 square foot Rabbit Hill Road house in Warren, CT forms a compound with a garage, pool and pool house.

How would you describe your work and do you see a common thread running through all your residential designs? The common thread in all our residential work is subtle elegance rooted in the site. We design houses that are comfortable, clean, and have a clear and distinctive style.

Above: The Miller House, commissioned by industrialist J. Irwin Miller and his wife Xenia Simons Miller in 1953, was opened to the public in May this year and Berke spoke at the inaugural symposium.

You recently spoke at a symposium celebrating the opening of Eero Saarinen’s Miller House to the public. The strongly horizontal buidling has a timeless quality and is still as striking today as it was in 1957. Can you share your impressions of that house? I love that house. It is a great work of architecture. It’s also an environment carefully calibrated for a large and happy family, and that is part of its success as a design.

Above: Berke (middle) at the Miller Symposium.

Above and below: The 3,400 square foot Darby Lane House in East Hampton, NY.

Managing a firm, speaking commitments and designing takes a lot of time and energy. How do you strike a balance between work and the rest of your life? I don’t strike a balance. I work hard and I play hard, and I don’t get very much sleep. However, I love everything I do.

What inspires you in your work? I love books and contemporary art. But my real inspiration is the endless variety of everyday life.

Above: The Tulip Avenue House in New Jersey.

1. You are a designer based in New York. Tell us about your background. What led you into this field? In high school I thought about going into architecture. A friend of my mother’s who was an enviably strong woman and feminist suggested that it was a great field for women.  Everyone in my family were doctors so in my sophomore year in college I told my mother  I’d finally decided to declare my major as “pre-med”. She was silent and finally she blurted out that she’d hoped I would do something with my creative abilities. That summer  I spent as an intern at an architecture firm and I studied art in Paris during my Junior year. When I finally decided to study architecture my mother was the one who helped me apply to transfer to UC Berkeley while I was in Paris –I will always appreciate that encouragement from her!

After I graduated I ended up in New York City. It was a recession and there weren’t many jobs out there. One of my professors who I had worked with at William Turnbull Associates suggested that I specialize in Historic Preservation. It made sense. I had spent a few summers as a “site architect” at a dig in Crete and was interested in architectural history.  I’m glad that I followed his advice, mostly because I ended up in New York and haven’t left ever since…

2. Your work exudes a warm minimalism and I think part of that is your use of timber in your projects -whether it be a beautiful wood dining table or kitchen island. How would you describe your style? Are you conscious of keeping spaces spare but soft-edged? Yes, I think one of the things that is very important to me is to “showcase” certain elements in a space –to allow enough space and “quiet” around an object for it to be seen.  That often translates into wood against a painted surface, or a colorful item beside a white surface.

I experienced this in a very powerful way the first time that I visited the Tate Modern – when I was riding the escalator down from the Mezzanine to the grand Turbine Hall space –the very spare and muted materials served as a beautiful background for the hundreds of people moving through the space –let alone the art!  I appreciate well-considered, calm interiors with exciting splashes of life, color or texture.

3. Tell us about your own space –  a 5,500 square foot Italianate brownstone in Brooklyn. Did you glean anything from working on your own space that you are able to use with your clients? Yes, I tried hard to avoid design decisions that would remind me of my self –that may sound strange, what I mean is that I wanted my home to serve as a neutral background for the many years of changes that it will endure.

I tried hard to keep it a space that could be personalized by my family but that would also benefit from my years of experience renovating other people’s homes.

I share this lesson with clients –that bigger, more permanant design decisions should be appreciated by everyone in the house –the crazier design decisions are often best kept to furnishings and art that can be changed more easily.

4.  How do you strike a balance between your work and the rest of your life? Do you find your work following you home to the kitchen table? In fact I do find my work following me home because my office is in my home!

This arrangement has been a huge benefit for me –it not only allows me to see my 2 year old son as much as possible, it also has allowed clients and potential clients to see my work.  Meetings often begin in my office but move to the kitchen or one of the bathrooms where they can experience dimensions on drawings and touch and feel finishes that I recommend.

Above: Tape shadow by artists Joe Penrod. You can check out more of his work here.

5. What inspires you in your work? Travel is a wonderful way to recharge and become inspired.   I try very hard to find places to stay while traveling that will provide me with a new and inspirational experience; whether it be a nice hotel, a house exchange or a tent in a beautiful location.

On a more daily basis – NYC provides me with so much inspiration – I love to see how creative New Yorkers can affect our every-day environment.  I particularly appreciate creative endeavors that make something beautiful out of the mundane. I also love spending time outdoors in Prospect Park or in my garden, nature can be the best inspiration of all.

You’ve been working as an interior designer for over a decade now and we see your work published widely. Do you have a signature look that typifies what you are trying to achieve with your residential work? I strive to create more space and light then the spaces have in actuality. I like a good functional use of space and an easy flow with one or two interesting pieces. No fuss really, but elegant simplicity and comfort. I love a really light or a really dark palette, you will not see much of in between in my projects. I am drawn to colors that are hard to define: blue grays, brown grays, black browns, brown aubergine etc.

Looking through the homes you’ve worked on I see a common thread of clean-lined simplicity and restrained color schemes. There’s a real serenity to your work. Is that a conscious choice on your part? I think it is subconscious, but I do believe we have enough stimulation in the “outside world”.

Tell us about some of the favorite home workspaces you’ve created. Do you find people ask for similar things in a home office? People want home work space to be integrated well into the home instead of being some forgotten isolated corner.The home office of Upper East Side Residence is one of my favorites (pictured below). I love the huge window one can look out from at NYC from 34^th floor. It’s dark: a combination of browns, grays and aubergine, which I think it makes it sophisticated and warm at the same time.

How do you strike a balance between work and home life? Do you find yourself designing at your kitchen table or are your work hours clearly defined and contained to an office space?  I like what I do, so I have no problem working at home when inspiration strikes. I do quite a lot of research in the evening if nothing else is going on. I think as a designer one never really stops working, the wheels are always turning.

What inspires you in your design? Many different things: it sounds like a cliché, but one of them is Nature. She has it all figured out: the light, the darkness, the textures and colors. I am drawn to “found objects” in nature as well as made man. Art history and European renaissance and baroque architecture are beginning to play a significant role as well.

Your architecture firm was founded in 2006 after you left your job as Chairman and President of Rosetta Stone – the language software company. What spurred that change? I had joined my brother and brother-in-law to start Rosetta Stone because they had invented a language-learning system that was very impressive and seemed to have the potential to change language learning, as it has! This was in 1992, in another recession, and I was ready to leave working for someone else as an architect. Actually, working for Rosetta Stone had a lot in common with architecture because we were all about generating the unknown. I always knew I would return to architecture so when a change-of-control opportunity presented itself for Rosetta Stone in 2006, I was happy to sell most of my interest.

Above: The Singer’s Glen Schoolhouse.

You buy older buildings and give them a new life but you also work for clients remodeling and building from the ground up. What kind of project do you prefer? My first choice is building from the ground up. Sundial House (below) was an opportunity to put together a lot of my ideas. I think of it as a manifestation of the nexus where function, material, form, site, ecology, engineering and construction come together.

I do also like working with existing buildings, particularly old ones like the Singer’s Glen School (above), where structural forces and materials give form in a natural integration. Doing a modern contrasting intervention based on the values of simple revealed brick and timber construction is very appealing to me. We got into buying, and giving new life, as you say, because right after I left Rosetta Stone, the recession hit, and it wasn’t a good time to start an architecture business.

Above: The Sundial House.

You are also a furniture designer. I came across your work at the Dwell conference this year – the cork pieces seemed to really strike a cord. What drew you to that particular material? We love cork because we can use it as structure and finish, it can be shaped three dimensionally, and because cork has that subtle give that makes it so accommodating to the touch. The response to the Euclid Series was very gratifying. People loved touching it, sitting on it, and playing with arrangements of the squares, rectangles and cylinders. We like being a part of the chain of invention and seeing the ideas that other people come up with.

Above: Inside the Sundial House. The coffee and side table were designed by Stoltzfus using cork.

Does your work life spill over into your home space? How do you strike a balance between your architecture practice and the rest of your life? Balance? Who said anything about balance? Actually, while I have to admit I am somewhat consumed by my work, it feels integrated into my life. The furniture line was started because I was designing furniture and objects for Sundial House. The meditation hut came because I wanted a solitary place where I could meditate, a protected place that could be left out in the weather. Something like the design of the meditation hut has brought me so much satisfaction, I don’t really think of it as work. Of course, the practice of meditation, in itself, brings tremendous balance into one’s life.

What inspires you in your work? I am inspired by the idea of openness to the new. I see it in so much of the architecture, art, and music that is around us in our communicative world, but also in the most unexpected places.

For instance, sometimes I see something and my eye misinterprets it for something else and that is the beginning of a new object. I had glanced at a picture of fireplace logs on andirons but I caught a quick moment where my eye interpreted the logs as a bench, so our Andiron Bench was born.

One of the things that inspires me the most is when we get a simple idea and immediately see that something about it does not work. That is an opportunity to look at it in a new way or let it evolve into something we had never thought of. Designing is as much about letting go as it is about finding the new.

Learning to generate options, plowing new ground, and letting go are extremely good exercises for human beings. I say sometimes that while we are contributing by building structures and designing objects, what is for sure being made is us, as human beings.

Above: Bolander’s office is 100 feet across a driveway from his home in Malibu.

While studying architecture you also learned to build furniture. How do those skills impact the buildings you design today? I still design some furniture and every once in a while even build something.  I think that designing and building furniture gave me a better sense of both material and assemblage, details of how different pieces (small in the case of furniture and larger with architecture) unite.

Above: The Mosquito table  and Hoist stool designed and fabricated by Bolander.

For the Whitehouse Chicago office I designed the edit desks, the reception desk and also a table that we ended up using both in the lunchroom/café as well as in the conference rooms and other meeting areas.

It is a simple plywood table that is built with just a couple of sheets of plywood and simple tools.  It is made of a top and two base pieces that all just key together.  To illustrate the table to the client I built a rough prototype myself in a few hours.

Lots of the furniture pieces I built were basically assemblage pieces; I spent lots of time searching for interesting objects and materials.  Like many architects I continue to look for interesting materials and methods of detailing all of the time.  I am working on a house in Mammoth, CA right now where we are using timber that the forest service has marked for removal from the local mountains (as fire control/forest management) for the exterior siding.

Above: The house in Mammoth uses locally sourced salvage timber for the exterior cladding.

We are cutting and assembling it in an irregular pattern to create depth and texture on the building façade.  I feel like this idea and detailing were influenced by building furniture.

You are based in Malibu. An architect’s surrounds often impact their designs. How did the area around your home, which you designed, have an impact on the building? My own house was built 15 years ago and was primarily budget driven.

We spent very little money and so had to spend it carefully.  Since paint is about the least expensive way to decorate we ended up painting the house with about 20 different shades of blue and green.

My wife and I both like those colors of course, but we were definitely influenced by the green of the surrounding mountains and the blue of the sky.  The form of the house, a curved shed roof, was a reaction to the slopes of the mountains around us and the slope of our own site.

On your website you mention the well known diagram by Charles Eames (below) showing the overlap of the interests of a design firm, a client, and society, the overlap signifying a successful project. How has that influenced the way you work?

That idea influences every project. I can’t really work outside of my own interests, and if I listen to my client and consider their needs (which hopefully I do) then their interests are represented.  The influence of society is felt on every project by the constraints of zoning and building codes.  Trying to work outside of those restraints is sometimes possible (by getting variances for example) but is often costly both in the time and energy that can be taken from a project.

I’m essentially a modernist and so are my clients for the most part, but the most common phrase I hear from a client is that they don’t want a cold house.  Much of the color and texture that is brought into many of my projects warms a simple and open space.

Above and below: The Blair House. Bolander specified site-cast, board-formed concrete foundation and walls, aluminum windows and 2×2 wood slats on the interior walls and ceiling. The cabinets are clad in laminate with solid surface countertops.  The concrete was the first material choice and was basically chosen from necessity, both for fire resistance and strength.  The laminate colors and wood were really a reaction to the concrete.

Another value that is often present with all three interested parties is that of gathering, whether as family or friends, or in the case of a business with clients and employees.  The now very common open plan of kitchen, dining and living illustrates this overlap to me.

Above and below: Collier House. Here Bolander used board-formed concrete walls, concrete floors, structural steel, laminate and solid surface countertops.  ”This is a beach house and the client wanted ‘happy’, beachy colors.  I worked with them to develop the color palette.”

Environmental sensibility also is embraced by the three interested parties that Eames mentions.  Most of my clients want to create buildings with low impact.  In Malibu visual resources are very important.  We are working on a project right now where the client has asked that the visual impact of the house be very low, and the governing agencies have mandated similar restrictions.  We are working together (albeit with some friction from time to time) to accomplish a house that meets my clients’ needs as well as those of the greater society of neighbors and users of the Santa Monica mountains.

Above: This is a render of Birusingh house which is still making its way through the approval process.

Do you bring your work home? How do you strike a life/work balance? Did you design a home office or does work just “happen” in your home? As odd as it may sound I really don’t.  I have a separate studio that is about 100 feet away from my house (below).  Every once in a while my kids pop in after school and sometimes some of them will spend the afternoon in the studio working on their homework, but once I cross the driveway and head back into the house I am home for the evening.

What inspires you in your work? Things like materials as we have discussed, and the sites themselves of course.

Above: Bolander and Kurt Birusingh at a site meeting for the Birusingh house.

I am fortunate to work on some pretty beautiful sites and more and more am trying to not get in the way of the natural beauty.

Above: Blair House sits on a steep site.

Also mentioned are families and gathering.  I think that creating spaces that people love does enable them to spend more time with the people that are important to them.  It’s cliché of course but we are more and more cut off from each other as our methods of communication get oddly more efficient.

There are other things I like, vintage bikes and being in beautiful natural settings for example.  I’m sure they influence my work somehow but I don’t know exactly how.

Lastly, an engaged client is by far the most inspirational element of a project.  That doesn’t always happen but when it does it really changes the project for the better.

Above: Corwin House at sunset.

In 2001 Oyler Wu was established when you were both were living in New York City. You both went to Harvard – did you meet there? Yes, during our time there we entered a couple of competitions together.  The partnership turned out to good one – in a couple of ways.

You are currently located in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles where you’ve taken a 1930′s residential duplex on a very busy street and turned it into a live/work space. Can you describe that process? The building wasn’t residential when you took it over. At the time we purchased the building in 2009, there was a wood flooring company operating out of the ground floor, and it was in serious need of an overhaul.

Although it had been renovated numerous times, there was never any real attempt to change the exterior from the pseudo-Spanish style stucco box to something more modern.  Because of its simplicity, we saw the potential of the building to become a simple, elegant volume.

Because we have been doing most of the work ourselves, the renovation has happened slowly, beginning with those elements that just made it livable. And over the two year period, we’ve begun slowly adding design elements.

The building is clad in cement board with recessed aluminum windows. Why those material choices? The cement board was chosen for its simplicity and the honesty of its materiality.  The clear coating reveals the richness of the board and the nailing pattern across the surface.  We felt that there was beauty to that that one just can’t get with a stucco surface.  The deep recessed windows came out of the need to flatten the surface of the building.  The existing building essentially required a second layer, and that process ultimately made the walls incredibly thick.  Recessing the windows was a way of expressing that thickness.

You have stripped the interior back to its essentials, exposing the 1930′s wood frame construction. Tell us how those design decisions impact they way you work and live in the space? Nearly everything we own is modern.  The exposed wood (and the shelving that was made from wood salvaged during the renovation phase) made for a contrast with those more modern elements in a way that we felt was complimentary to both. I’m not sure that particular aspect dramatically changed how we live so much as it highlights the aesthetic qualities of both.  What does change our lives is the live/work configuration of living upstairs and working downstairs, as well as the incredibly vibrant Silver Lake neighborhood.

What inspires you in your work? We’re occasionally asked this question, and we always have a hard time answering it.  While we love the work of so many architects (Gaudi, Otto, Miralles, Saarinen to name a few), our work more often works in an evolutionary way.  We tend to draw on unanswered questions and tectonic discoveries produced in previous projects as well as specific contextual problems of a given project (a site constraint, for example).  It’s also fair to say that we’re constantly inspired by our students (at the Southern California Institute of Architecture – SCI-Arc).

Your design studio – Standard – is based in Los Angeles and in your work your European roots seemed to have merged with a particularly modern Californian aesthetic giving both a warmth and a rigor that is really striking. Can you give us a bit of background – you both studied architecture in Germany. How do you think that has influenced your work in California? We met in Germany, and while we went to different schools there, it was like an intersection in our studies.  We both went to architecture school in the US as well, but on opposite coasts.  In American schools the emphasis is on process and forms but in Germany the modernist project continues to be an influence; our work reflects some of that idealism.  When we started to work together in Los Angeles, the dominant trend was to create new form.  We were more interested in creating space, and in LA’s modern history.  Early in our practice, we had the opportunity to work on a couple of projects that were interiors combined with landscapes, so we designed from the inside out.  We worked with materials, openings in walls, views, and light; and less with the outward appearance of the building.

Your own home, aptly dubbed “The Tree House” is perched on a steep hill on the east side of Los Angeles. How did that site influence your design? We had lived on the site for about seven years before we started the project, so we understood the site well and we knew how we wanted to live there.

Under the tree there is a microclimate that’s usually about 10 degrees cooler than down at the street.

We wanted the house to be under the tree’s canopy, and to create the living space there.  The south orientation and expansive views led us to open the house up on that side, and to keep the back more solid.

The material palette is very restrained – concrete, redwood and white cabinetry with marble in the bathrooms. How do you go about making those choices? We wanted to balance the materials and create contrast.   In the main living space we defined the perimeter with white walls and cabinets, so the wood in the center of the room looks more like built-in furniture.  It is a small house and the approach to materials and the glass help make it feel more expansive.

The home includes a desk/work area in the master bedroom. Do you find your work life spills over into your home life? Our work spills into our home life probably a little too much, and thankfully, this desk is rarely used for work.

Currently our office is very close to the house, so we try not to bring work home.

What inspires you in your work? Silvia:  New York, aged finishes, vast (higher altitude) landscapes, Rick Owen’s fashion, Edith Heath’s ceramics (below).

Le Courbusier’s concrete (and glass) architecture, Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima’s material-less seeming architecture (below Sejima’s New Museum in New York City. Image via StarMedia).

Jeff: Furniture design: Charlotte Perriand, Joe Colombo, Jean Royere.  Automotive design:  Alfa Sprint Speciale, classic Bertone designs.  The architecture of Jose Antonio Coderch (below Coderch’s Casa Ulgade, Barcelona 1953) , Mies van der Rohe’s early work.

Photos: Shots of Silvia and Jeff’s home by Benny Chan/fotoworks.

You opened your own Venice, CA-based design practice, DEX Studio in 1999 after you graduated from with a degree in architecture from USC. How do you think being based in California has influenced your work? Growing up in California has had a tremendous impact on my design approach.  My earliest memories are of my home life around a large patio, a pool, and a yard full of fruit trees.

This connection between interior and exterior spaces continued throughout grade and high school.  The school I attended had a campus designed in part by A. Quincy Jones. The grounds were a series of spaces that were centered around small courtyards.  The post and beam architecture included vast walls of glass and flat roofs nestled within eucalyptus trees. To this day, my designwork centers around connecting interior and exterior spaces.  This sensibility has developed into a philosophy of interacting with the environment through designed forms.  My schooling at USC focused on finding ways to define shelter and its interaction with the environment.  This includes using natural elements around a site to inform, animate, and provide comfort for the user.

The Redcliff Residence was designed for John Shields. a concept site planner for theme parks and his partner, artist/illustrator Nat Reed. The property is steeply sloping with Nat’s studio at street level and the more private sections of the house travelling up the hill. How did the sloping sight effect your design? The site offered an opportunity to maximize desirable views and bring in a better quality of light for the owner. The existing home had all of the elements of a modern design including a minimal geometry and extensive use of glass.  Unfortunately, the two buildings were originally sited to maximize the square footage, not to create the best space for the home-owner.  In addition, the existing windows let in too much heat, glaring light, and unattractive views of neighboring houses.  These factors made the program more complex and rich. It developed in a way to use the whole site to connect a series of outdoor spaces with the existing and remodeled architecture. We took advantage of the topography of the site to highlight the best city and neighborhood views, while screening less attractive areas.

We implemented overhangs and operable glazing to reduce the heat load and glare on the interior space.  We then provided a passive cooling system to draw airflow up from the lower spaces of the house into the second floor, thereby cooling the entire house.  The owner’s landscape design softens the geometry of the architectural elements through animated movement of leaves, plants, and flowers.  Inside the home, no two rooms are alike in view, light quality, or orientation.  You are compelled to move from space to space throughout the day to take advantage of what each space has to offer.

Was there a conscious decision to separate the live and work spaces on the property? The accessory space on site helped the decision to keep the scale of the house modest and to separate the uses between work and live.  The distinction is made more clear when you leave the home and travel through a landscaped walkway to get to the work studio at a lower elevation.  It’s not a bad commute.

How does the use of texture in this home – with its detailed exterior screens, timber-lined internal walls connect to your larger body of work? I always work with texture.  We prefer working with natural materials that express an honesty and quality through their imperfect attributes.

We are designing for our clients who are unique and idiosyncratic.  Our designs take advantage of those idiosyncrasies by reaching all of our senses.  At the Shields residence, we used a lot of wood. The exterior wood screens were intended to animate and articulate the tall street façade.  As the sun casts its light on the surface, there is a shadow play that changes throughout the day.

For the stairs, we used walnut because of its distinctive grain and warm hue, which contrasts the steel and acrylic screen it abuts.

Even when we work on commercial spaces, we try to impart the same signature feel.  At our most recent restaurant, The Tripel, which opened in April in Playa del Rey, we created a feature wall, clad in reclaimed wood with excerpts from an ancient Sumerian hymn on beer-making routed out.  It runs the length of the restaurant and creates an element that is both graphic and textured.

Another example of our texture work is at the outdoor patio at Rose Café in Venice.  We designed the space around custom redwood benches, which are built into a screen of mangaris wood slats that wrap up a structural framework.  The interplay between the different materials as well as the positive and negative spaces between the wood slats creates a rhythmic pattern.

We have also been working with the team at SugarFISH on their sushi restaurants.  Our first restaurant with them was in Brentwood and it is still one of my favorites.  At that location, we designed a wall covering that includes over 3,000 individually cut 3-inch by 3-inch cubes of Douglas fir that subtly vary in depth. The wall extends over forty-five feet in length and creates a rippling effect that mimics a breeze passing over water. By using Douglas Fir for the cubes, the wood’s understated end grain becomes a form of natural ornamentation that reveals itself without requiring stain or paint.

Lastly, what inspires you in your work? I have always been inspired by other design disciplines.   Textiles for modern fashion or primitive arts influence the surfaces that wrap my spaces.  Williams and Tsien Architects build with strong elemental materials like concrete, bronze and steel while making apparent the more fluid qualities of the materials. (Their Long Island Residence pictured below).

Artist Robert Smithson’s use of the landscape as a large canvas of natural materials in a built form is also inspirational. Below is Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ at Rozel Point in Utah.

Photo credits: Dex Studio work is photographed by Jill Stevens, LEED AP from Dex. The Long Island Residence via the TWBTA. Smithson’s Spiral Jetty via Robert Smithson.

This is the first in an occasional series where we will highlight some of the extraordinary talent at Herman Miller. Wayne Susag has had a variety of design-related roles at Herman Miller since he began as a design consultant at the company back in 1988. He is currently part of the Research and New Product Development team. Here’s a few more things you may not know about him.

1. Tell us a few things you’d like us to know about you. I met Ray Eames at a cocktail party in Minneapolis. I am a dedicated  textile junkie  - I have textiles from all over Europe, Africa, South America and the Middle East. Ironing is my therapy. Not PETA approved but when a small child (that’s me on the bottom right) I had trapping lines and would sell my pelts to a Canadian furrier.

Above: This is Wayne as a boy sitting on the rug he would eventually inherit.

2. Which is your favorite piece of Herman Miller design? I think the Nelson Marshmallow Sofa fits this bill. It is bold and has personality. The strong visual form of the sofa asks for round tables and artwork with complementing geometry. I like the idea of letting its form, color, and hue work together to make the statement.

3. What Herman Miller piece do you wish you had at home? I have coffee spoons, pastry forks and  pate knives that all need a home. The BCS Large Cabinet is on my list for the perfect companion piece.

4. What should you keep in mind when setting up a home workspace? Transparency can trump scale by making any form appear as though it’s occupying less space. And your desk chair is a good place to start. The SAYL chair, for example, is comfortable and supportive, but it has a transparency that doesn’t cramp your space visually. Chair, desk, storage cabinet—whatever you choose—arrange them so they complement how you work. Don’t get hung up with doing all your tasks in this primary work zone. Keep only the essentials there and move all the secondary materials elsewhere.

5. What inspires you? When it comes to designing interiors, I take it personally. I’m trained professionally in design, but I always relate any challenge to those I’ve faced in my own home. Take the rug I inherited from my aunt early on in my design career (it is pictured above). It’s a beautiful Iranian Sarouk. I remember sitting on it as a young boy and being fascinated by the pattern and colors and the amazing craft involved in making it. I made it the centerpiece of the room, and my inspiration. I picked the vibrant hues in the rug and everything—furniture, textiles, artwork, flowers—all work as accents to complement these colors.

When I add something, it has to harmonize. For example, I’m considering adding an Eames Molded Plywood Lounge chair. Its classic form, designed in 1946, would complement the rug, which I estimate is 80 to 90 years old. And it comes in a red that will make it an excellent accent.