What is the essence of a space?
One of the things you struggle with when redesigning/renovating a home is defining what it's supposed to be and where it needs to go.
If you were creating a theme in your property, this exercise might be the first step. You have to strip the project down to it's essence (easier said then done) to know what to do.
There's a lot of ways to look at this.
Historical
What's the historical context of this building? Let's say this is a mostly original Victorian structure - it's easier right? Because it was all built at the same time, so when you get down to the bones, you can kind of understand how to reconstruct things.
BUT, this gets more complicated when you are working on a home that has additional edits over the years - let's say a 30's Tudor with a big 70's addition.
Much more complex! Architectural history is not going to be your only guide here.
If you were redoing the entire thing, you would attempt to go down to the bones and imagine building the same structure from the beginning as one thing, not two.
How would it work together seamlessly? It's hard, but this is the correct way to think about it.
Feeling / Emotion is another way to do this.
Let's say I'm in my dining room? What is the essence as the base layer of this dining room? How is it supposed to feel?
Formal? Impressive? Cozy? Intimate?
That's going to give me a lot of direction in color, in material, in lighting etc.
If it's supposed to feel "grand", I might want to vault the ceiling or I could use vertical wall moldings to make it feel taller and more formal. I might paint it a richer color too.
If I want to make it cozy, I may use darker colors, I probably won't vault the ceiling. I'm probably going to try to create "Enclosure" (from last week's newsletter).
Architectural Features - essentially working with, not against, what you've got
In the space, ask yourself, what do these architectural features (assuming I'm not changing them) want me to do?
If you have really low ceilings in a portion of the home, it's probably not an area you want to be attempting "grand," or at least grand in terms of the hotel lobby sense of the word.
This might be a better space to think more along the lines of den, or lounge or intimate guest room.
If you were gutting a 70's kitchen and not sure which direction to go, you might look at adjoining rooms (those are of course architectural features). So if the 70's kitchen opens into a formal living room from the 40's, it might not make sense to do a super modern minimal thing with your cabinets, counters and lighting.
The architectural feature of said formal living room kind of dictates what the kitchen should feel like.
Bridges
Some rooms/spaces are nests. And some are bridges.
You start by considering what is the "flow" from room to room. How is life lived in this space?
An example in my home is the living room (sorry for no pictures). When you walk in our front door, you walk right into the living room. The "path" to the rest of the house is directly through the center of the living area.
I don't love this but I make it work. Although I would prefer a living room that created a U shape or a square where people could converse across from each other, it's simply not possible.
Our front living room functions primarily as a bridge into the rest of the house.
It's why we created a second living area. A more formal room, tucked away where you can feel enclosed and the path is in, but not through the room.
You will probably find you have a lot of rooms like this in your house.
There are certain areas where you nestle in and certain areas that you primarily walk through.
Be open to the fact that some rooms you think should be nests will actually function best as bridges.
What's great about bridges is they can be your transition from one room to another - they can help transition architectural styles, colors, feelings & mood so that your home unfolds gently as you walk through.
