In designing nontraditional houses, architects worry a lot about how their buildings and the spaces inside will look. But they sometimes have one more worry. How will the client, the owner of the house, furnish it?
Architects and clients can be at odds over furniture and other interior accoutrements -- area rugs, window treatments, wall decorations, floor lamps -- placed in rooms after the architect goes away.
And when clients consult with interior decorators, architects become even more nervous, because three design tastes are at work, and potentially in conflict, instead of just two.
Although furnishing anxiety is attributable to differences in taste, it also arises because architects approach space-making differently than do clients. This is partly the result of how we learn to design in architecture schools.
Architectural design education focuses primarily on overall building form and spatial composition. Students think only occasionally about furniture.
Furthermore, beginning architects tend to envision the ideal client as one who asks the architect to select all the furniture or, budget permitting, commissions the architect to actually design the furniture. Not surprisingly, few clients do either.
Consequently, many architects concentrate attention on the visual characteristics of spaces, on their geometric qualities, proportions and dimensions. They shape rooms to respond to views, to introduce daylight in interesting ways, and to exploit surfaces, materials and details defining the room's three-dimensional boundaries.
Of course, architects don't ignore functional requirements, but functional requirements may not provide the aesthetic inspiration they were taught to search for.
Most homeowners think differently about rooms. Functionality, comfort and convenience may be their highest priorities. They seek spaces in which they can place furniture they like, rooms in which they feel at home because of the contents and not just because of the interesting shape or dramatic proportions.
Evidence of these competing agendas appears regularly in print.
