Believe It or Not

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B el i e ve I t o r No t Te x t b y L o u i s P o s t e l

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P h o t o g r a p h y b y M i c h a e l Fe i n

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May – June 2010

“Run, it’s the Client from Hell,” says the met iculous young draughtsman to the offic e a ssi stant . The Client from Hell

breezes by them to c orner a bow-t ied gent we shall call Edmund S., the firm’s principle. E. S., a s he’s know n on Cape Cod

and in Westpor t , Connec t icut , wears a goatee w ith a purposeful Mephi stophelean air. “Every thing must go!” the client

says. “It’s just awful. I need you to get rid of it .” E. S. rai ses an eyebrow, more amused than ang ry. It’s not for nothing that

he’s earned a reputat ion for being able to deal w ith clients every other architec t ha s “fired.” At stake are thousand s of ton s

of marble, thousand s of hours of highly skilled labor. The a ssi stant and the draughtsman li sten a s architec t and client

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c onfer by the w indow. After a while, they hear E. S. say to the Client from Hell, “Oh, my dear, you are so - oooh crazy !”

more a s sly c ompliment than crit ici sm.

It’s hardly news that client relat ion s represent the single most impor tant fac tor to desig n suc c ess. Who c omes back a

sec ond t ime makes all the differenc e, especially in difficult t imes. What i s news i s that you don’t nec essarily have to be a

gentle soul w ith a Mephi stophelean goatee to make those relat ion s work . You just need an understanding of what makes

people t ick . Psychologi st Richard S chwar tz at the Center for S elf-L eadership in Chicago laid the foundat ion of thi s

st ruc ture twenty years ago. Sinc e then, hi s model ha s taken off, especially in New England for some rea son. The old

psychology would a sk the desig ner to figure out what the client wants and ig nore hi s or her nutt iness. In c ont ra st ,

S chwar tz suggests those nutty par ts should be heard and respec ted. Maybe your client believes an Italianate roof welded

to your Shingle Style desig n “ha s got to be!” There i s a rea son for thi s view : the client ha s a belief, probably from

childhood, that thi s par t icular desig n makes a home a sanc tuary. That shag rug ha s to be in the c orner because another

client ha s some deep - seated belief that thi s i s what c oziness looks like. The st ronger the emot ion, the more you know it’s

a belief expressing its often primit ive interpretat ion of “home a s sanc tuary.” S o play nic e w ith these beliefs.

B oston architec t John Battle notes that people often seem to believe a high-tech home ha s to be moderni st in style. “My

prac t ic e i s more rooted in a t radit ional vocabulary, but technically it’s state of the ar t ,” he says. He’s working on a house

on L ake Champlain in Vermont that’s powered by t racking solar panel s, a geothermal heat pump and an indust rial-

st rength w ind turbine that w ill generate enough juic e to sell the exc ess back to the state. “ The ow ner went around to the

abutters and said he wa s thinking of putt ing up a w indmill for him self,” Battle says. “ They all said ‘Hey, that’s a pretty

interest ing idea!’ ” Up went a big turbine, and the neighbors all share the c osts.

Derek Ca scio, scio an indust rial desig ner w ith Phillips’ LED light ing unit Color Kinet ic s in Burlington, Ma ssachusetts, and

Sam Aquillano, Aquillano an indust rial desig ner w ith B ose in Framingham, Ma ssachusetts, are c o -founders of Desig n Museum

B oston. “People believe indust rial desig ners are sor t of like c orporate hairdressers,” Ca scio says. “ We’re creat ing the

museum to help educate the public about all desig n: indust rial, interior, architec tural.” Ac quillano add s, “New England

i s sec ond only to the Bay Area in numbers of desig ners. In Ma ssachusetts alone there are 44 , 50 0 desig ners: architec ts,

interior desig ners, land scape, video games, fa shion. Almost every a spec t of our lives i s impac ted by a desig ner.” The

museum w ill ac tually be a series of roving in stallat ion s, the first of which i s planned for B oston City Hall later thi s year.

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S omet imes desig ners have their ow n long-held beliefs, like the one that’s so c onvinc ed that “every thing across the pond

i s far more elegant !” Cheryl Hackett, Hackett author of the rec ent book New por t Shingle Style, says, “After the 1 876 Expo

c elebrat ing the U. S. Centennial, architec ts such a s McKim, Mead & White and Peabody and Stearn s said, ‘ What are we

doing c opying European architec ture?’ They became fa scinated by the early settlers and went on tours sketching

c olonial homes. The result wa s what we call Shingle Style.” She cites New por t’s Isaac B ell House — a McKim, Mead &

White work—where open floor plan s take advantage of the sea breezes and oc ean views. “It’s so playful, so invent ive,”

she says. And just a s beaut iful a s any thing European. Hackett i s now working for The New por t Collaborat ive, whose

“Out to S ea” residenc e at Carnegie Abbey ( built by Woodmei ster Ma ster Builders) i s deservedly on the book’s front

c over.

There’s a c ommon belief that you need to hire a local architec t , one steeped in the local vernacular and one who knows

all the other players — c ont rac tors and subs —in the area . However, Morehouse MacDonald and A ssociates, of L exington,

Ma ssachusetts, run c ont rary to that belief. Says John MacDonald, MacDonald “ We’re doing jobs all over : S c ottsdale, Arizona ( a

‘tweener’ sor t of Spani sh c olonial adobe meets Yankee), an Italianate manor house in Naples, a barn in Vermont , a

Vic torian c ottage on a lake in New Jersey.” In many ca ses, these are repeat clients who are using the firm for their

ret irement or vacat ion homes. “ The fac t that we’re w illing to get on an airplane and go to them makes our clients happy.

They t rust the relat ion ship they ’ve built w ith us,” MacDonald says. “It’s nic e for us, too. B oston’s pretty c ompet it ive; it

seem s more ea sygoing in the West and S outh.” A s for choosing the right builder, MacDonald call s the AIA for the names

of top builders in the area , then interviews them, checks their referenc es and so on. “It works out pretty well,” he says.

Forget about the not ion that “cla ssic New England” i s all about a c ottage look in serene neut ral s. Trac y Davi s of Urban

Dwellings in Bath, Maine (where you can hear sturgeon spla shing in the Kennebec outside her offic e w indow), says her

clients are telling her, “ We’re done w ith c ottage style. We want modern and give me c olor. Don’t give me any thing white!”

S o, for example, she says, “ We just did a mudroom w ith built-in boxed seat ing in a rich wenge -like fini sh in spired by

Japanese Tan su benches. The cushion s are in spic ed pumpkin a s i s the cabinet ry along the wall. We g raded the hues of

pumpkin cabinet ry, so a s you move from left to right they darken. The wallpaper i s in a large pai sley in orange and

choc olate.”

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Desig ner Linda St im son of Inner Vi sion s Interiors in L exington, Ma ssachusetts, i s seeing more requests for c olor, too,

especially from younger clients. She w rites from her Blackberry : “I am seeing people under thir ty paint ing ent ire room s

in fuch sia w ith white and indigo ac c ents. Al so deep rust , or red room s for warmth and security.”

A par t icularly stubborn belief about people who work in desig n i s that they ’re either right brained (slightly weird,

creat ive) or left-brained (analy t ical, logical) but not both. Architec t Stephanie T. Horow itz of Z eroEnergy Desig n,

B oston, and one of New England Home ’s 5 Under 40 award w inners for 2010, begs to differ. “Our work takes a much

more holi st ic approach,” she says. “ The desig n i s both beaut iful and informed by our calculated approach to building

performanc e; it’s the c omplete pack age. My firm i s of the belief that the beauty and brain s of our desig n are inext ricably

linked.”

Now that’s a belief we can hold onto.

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