CUT TO THE FEELING
The thought process behind the design of our Athens Farmhouse.
Sidebar - this post is all about the design approach behind our Athens farmhouse, which you can see more of on MiLK Decoration here.
When Mathias Goeritz and Luis Barragan initially coined the term “emotional architecture”, I don’t think they anticipated the advent of late-stage capitalism coupled with mass media. Nowadays it feels like the only emotions our architecture and their accompanying interiors are meant to evoke are either a) joy, or b) envy, both of which end up falling pretty short of conveying the full breadth of human experience. I believe that not honoring this depth of emotion results in redundant compositions that fall flat, and in homes that don’t hold the lives of those who live in them very well. Our first millennial saint, whose canonization got bumped after the (sort of?) surprising death of Pope Francis, put it really well when he said “All people are born as originals, but many die as photocopies.”
For our recent project in Athens, New York, our clients initially asked us to compose an interior that evoked the history of their home and its surroundings. We were unable to dig up much about the property’s origins, so instead we turned to a historical plaque two blocks away on the town’s main drag. It commemorates the wreck of the Steamboat Swallow on the shores of the then still-forming village in 1845. At the time, steamboat racing between Albany and New York City was very common, and like most unregulated practices in a rapidly industrializing society, it was wildly unsafe. On the night of April 7, 1845, The Swallow hit a rock outcropping while traveling at full speed, resulting in the sinking of the ship and the death of 20-40 of its passengers, with many swimming to the Athens shoreline where good samaritans had gathered to help. We used this historic tale to build a fictional narrative around a grieving captain’s widow whose world might’ve been upended by the accident while living at the property.
In what ways does grief shape our environment? What kind of poetry can be found in melancholy? What colors feel like longing? These are questions we asked while concepting. I skimmed Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking again to try to come up with ways to externalize a very internal mourning process, creating a spartan kind of interior that felt restrained and a little formal in its public-facing spaces while allowing for inflections of color (the main bedroom is aptly swathed in a color called “Ghost Ranch”) and pattern for a bit of surrealism in the private ones. There’s a Schumacher fabric with a scrolling pattern that we used for curtains in the main space that (to me) feels a lot like how Didion writes about grieving – a kind of habituated way of thinking that at first feels like you’re being set free, only to realize that you’ve just been looping back towards the source the whole time.
One of the things that signifies this most in the project is one of the last things we completed. A custom mural by Nina Barry portrays a view of the Hudson that’s meant to commemorate the scene of the tragedy, even though the view itself is from the cliffs of Westpoint about an hour downriver. It’s the first thing you see upon entering the home, with the original light fixture still overhead, and its placement ensures you encounter it repeatedly throughout the day. You can’t escape it no matter how much you might like to, and it will be there again in the morning.
The curious thing is that I don’t think the home really feels sad in the slightest, and I think our clients would agree. Because when you make room for something more than just joy, whether that’s anger or fear or heartache or whatever, you end up with an experience that feels richly nuanced. I think that’s called being human. I’ve been told they live in houses.
P.S. Here’s Some of Our Key Points of Reference for The Project
1. Dagobert Peche
The Austrian member of the Wiener Werkstatte was a genius in the decorative arts who also died tragically young. We used his work to inform our selection of the more ornamented moments in the home, and we even swiped the rose on the linen TV cover from one of his many patterns. You can see some of his work in this great post from the Commune blog.
2. Edith Wharton
Anytime I need to channel a kind of casual elegance, whether that’s through designing or writing, I spend a little time with Edith Wharton, whose home is a 15-minute drive from mine. Today her interiors might read a bit trad and stuffy, but they were radically simple and inventive for her time, and the palette is always right. Plan your own visit here.
3. This Painting by Andrew Wyeth
We spent a lot of time in the early stages of the project talking about the work of Andrew Wyeth, who (for me) articulates a very American version of longing. So it was wild to me when, months after paint schedules and FF&E had already been decided, I stumbled across this piece by the artist that I was completely unfamiliar with and hadn’t been referenced at all. Its trim and walls are almost identical to where we landed, and its palette basically incorporates almost every hue we put in the house. There’s even a body of water in the distance to boot. Visiting the Brandywine Center in PA is very much on the bucket list.
4. A Shaker x Barragan Lovechild
In thinking through elements of both emotion and restraint, I turned to the father of emotional architecture, Barragan (shocker), trying to find the commonalities between his work/application of color and the more regionally appropriate Shaker style. Here’s a good Shaker architecture book that you can buy right now, if you so desire, and a classic Barragan book if you’re in the mood for more of a splurge.