Design Solutions:Living Small, Condo Life

STUDYING SPACE AND HOW WE USE IT
Marie Payzant

These photos are not posted here as an invitation to be simply a voyeur; I am former senior editor at Designer’s West Magazine, when it was considered the “H&G to the industry”, under Carol King, editor, and Walt Brown, Publisher.
    There, I’ve interviewed and written up world-class architects such as Arata Isozake (my favorite interview and person ever; Isozake’s intellectual vision, capacity for wordsmithing, and humility--though he is the most important architect to emerge from Japan in the last century--still inform me); Wolf Prix of the visionary Coop Himmelblau (Austria); Peter Shire (of the famous Memphis group, native of Los Angeles) as he was moving away from his famous teapots and into furniture and painting, as well various other designers/artists/architects.
    It was at the “Blue Whale” in Los Angeles, in fact, that I first stumbled upon Feng Shui, having asked at a Bruslin showroom, “No offense, certainly everything is beautiful in this showroom, as it is in every other—certainly we have the best design elements in the world featured here during Market Week, but WHY is everybody lingering here—not that your finger foods aren’t great—by why are so many flocking here? To Bruslin?”

HOW FENG SHUI LANDED ON MY HEAD
    “Funny you should ask” said the Bruslin Showroom rep.
    “Do you see this window cut just here, and the red flute there, overhead? And over there, the water feature where everyone is gathering?”
    I followed her through that gracious, welcoming space.
    “We recently consulted a Feng Shui master, the oldest, the real master in the U.S,” she explained.
    And so began my quest. Long before it came into our vocabulary in the U.S., I had assembled a library on it, using its precepts in my home and garden and retail design.
    Though its Chinese history involves recognizing the auric historic “vibe” and energetics of a place—as in, recognizing graveyards, not disturbing the dead (for example, we might attribute some of Baltimore’s inheritance of violence to the fact that it was a slave state, and to what took place at Federal Hill)     In a word, Feng Shui, like good architecture, is about flow, about metaphor.
    As a writer and a close reader, my favorite tome is Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain” for its extended metaphor. Metaphor also being my favorite part of Feng Shui, which I extend to: if I am beautifying my corner with intention, why is it not possible to clean up the world? With our intention, first, at home?
    Why couldn’t it simply widen out, enrich our city cores, our traffic patterns, and so forth . . .I do go on, but then don’t forget I was witness to debates by Sci Arc architects and profs in Los Angeles, debating premises of architecture with their peers from all over the globe.
     “Consider the visual information in Watts,” said one SCI ARC speaker. “What do you expect a child with this kind of visual information to grow up into, to become, to choose for a lifestyle, a career?”
    I love how he owned that for us, the wider culture. Those privileged to be there talking about such things. Those capable of changing the cityscapes, the promise underneath of change for the children. For the future.
    For another example in the news today, our possible next Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, grew up in Brooklyn. However, when her family moved to that public housing project, her mother did not see it as blighted or as impoverished. “It was shiny, new!” said her mother, who raised a lawyer and a doctor-to be right there.
    Not infrequently I muse over the ethics of building homes in the cityscape. Those who built the East Coast row homes so narrowly, a hundred and more years ago, perhaps thinking of squeezing in two or three more per city block, were designing for the future as well. Could they know, in those horse-and-carriage times, the squeeze of living that small, the dismal lack of light, the century of blight? I haven’t done the research yet, but I’m pretty certain Baltimore’s crime rate, now vying for first in the nation with Detroit, might easily be linked to depression, from lack of light in so many homes thrown up most likely without a nod to the future generations who would raise their families there. The New Amsterdam row home, which preceded these, was typically wider; there was water everywhere, and more green space.
    Some suggest that after the 1904 fire, trees in the urban core of Baltimore were never replanted. There are green spaces throughout the city; most overgrown, most chain-linked in. As with most things, wealth changes the human experience; the further out you can get from the city, the more greenery there is; Olmstead even planned parts of Roland Park.

LOVE AND INTENTION IN INTERIOR DESIGN
Having consulted Hope Gerecht of Baltimore several times in recent years to solve Feng Shui directional quandaries, who always left me with sticky notes on walls, which in all truth only doubly puzzled me—I should have tape-recorded her walk-throughs, I see in hindsight--and a lot of high-velocity comments, and her enthusiasm for space-making, I’ll never forget when she said, at the end of all this activity, “Don’t you see, Marie, it’s only love.”
    I love that story. If love is loving intention for what will take place in the space I work with, that’s the kind of Feng Shui I want to, and do, practice.

WHY WRITE ABOUT MY OWN CONDO?
I plan to write about interiors again, continuing my own studies of space and how it is best utilized, particularly for those of us downsizing, or with second homes in a second city. I also see myself as studying more of ergonomics—car interiors for certain, along with human physiology—I’m particularly interested in designing lifestyle templates, both in health routines and interior design, for the aging. Since we all are. Aging.
     Since my magazine “clips” for the past decade are only in fashion design and retail concepts, as designer of those--I’m starting out with what’s in front of me: my own evolving interior design theory.

WE ALL EVENTUALLY SIZE DOWN
Sizing down from a seven-bedroom three-level poured concrete Arts & Crafts home in Roland Park with a full basement and private alley entrance to this (pictured): a two-bedroom two-bath condo on one floor with a shared hallway, and a population of neighbors with their own health/aging concerns--although I have not much changed my neighborhood—this connotes a 180-degree change in lifestyle.
    My changes have come early, as most people wait longer to downsize. At fifty-two, I can still be obsessed with moving things around, and get them moved. My daughter and I change bedrooms not infrequently; although I love that, whenever she starts to sleep with me I give up the room and make it hers.
    She keeps wanting that; I suppose I have addicted her to change as well, but she is growing into a pre-teen and learning to organize her things, so I narrate the work and teach her: you will have to teach your college roommates, your husband, your housekeeper, yourself. Like this. Keep what you love now, fix, sell, or donate the rest. With the proceeds from what you sell, buy something—one thing--new and useful to symbolize what you are learning, doing, expanding into next. Too many things exhaust the eye. When we come in from outside, we want to find function, harmony, simplicity as much as possible.


ROOM-BY-ROOM: THE SAME AS WITH A LARGER HOME
Our needs evolve; at present I am “activating” the Wisdom Room in its colors, and by studying there each morning. The small size allows the eye not to rove, makes it intimate for studying at least the daily news.
    My rooms look nothing like these photos now, but instead look like a New York space. Living in a condo on one floor, I’ve rearranged these rooms continually. (That’s why I think I have some wisdom to offer on this subject: I would hate to think of people older than me having to tangle with this abrupt downsizing after living in enormous homes).
    Every room is a living room, a dining room, a newsroom, a study. Different rooms for different times of day. For cooking, serving, eating, sleeping, study, play.
    One beauty of the open plan is one can share space and occasional conversation while maintaining quietude and separation to get tasks finished. One minus, and a big one, is that personal rooms are in with the semiformal. So it takes more, continual diligence to keep your many projects, cooking, laundry, communications, etc. continually tidy.
    The former dining room now has a Teeter hang-up, library, music library, opium bed type couches. I like to file there, early. Plan the day, go through old music archives as the benefit of slicing through all the papers of the past. It’s the only place I’ve been accused by friends of sitting of still four minutes at a time. I have it shuttered off, though. It’s a girl cave, not much formal about it. The metaphor there being British, dark, contained. Since it should be green, for wealth, I have notes of green in botanical prints. Next a green wall, staghorn ferns on temple beams I’ll make into holders at the windows.

NOTHING STAYS THE SAME HERE
It’s been a sort of science for me, this space-making, complete with theory.
Shall I write it here? It’s evolving even now. The music tray is too far away from this computer. The room I’m writing in needs double ceiling fans, but they can’t bring the ceiling down visually, so they must be light and lighthearted in design. Like a Calder mobile. I’m sure somebody’s made one. I can search the Web for that.

THE ART OF SUBTRACTION
Trained as an editor, I was, when we thought in terms of saving KEYSTROKES. So wasting footsteps, or steps in any process--I LOVE HENRY FORD—I have set up manufacturing lines, too, quality control lines too--make no sense to me. Moving through space, whether home or office, should be above all efficient. One method I use is photography: After looking at photos of a space I think is finished, I can detect more impediments, extra things to exhaust the eye, or to bump into, particularly on the floor.
    In the longe view, I look forward to one day when Baltimoreans move as New Yorkers do. What a beautiful dance, no clanging, overcrowding, staring, just the brief dance at each cross light and the unspoken adios, adieu.

I see myself in demand consulting for retail concepts, including demographic and income studies, store identity, logo, lighting, display, product choice, employee training too. I’ve done everything right and everything wrong in retail. I’ve worked for the best, and built “Baltimore’s Best” (four times bestowed that award while partner at A People United)
    I could write a book. And mean to.

ADDRESSING ABSENTEEISM WITH LIGHT
    Feng shui, ergonomics, five elements. I use all three, and color, sound and light with or without much budget. Always full-spectrum light to alleviate employee depression, absenteeism, more.
    The work is done intuitively and somewhat mercurially, without much benefit of tape measures when I go at it, (although I can tell you any measurement almost exactly) but prior to that it’s about the study of people IN space, how their needs and patterns define what shall be shaped, enjoyed, accomplished task by task and step by step within it.

TEST: THE GARDEN PATH NOT TAKEN
Here’s the garden metaphor. What do you do when children, even some adults, cut through your garden, despite the formal path nearby which you have clearly indicated?
    Should you light the path?
    Widen it?
    (A proper garden path always has room for two, side-by-side, would say Monet, but I’ve made paths that make you feel like you are a child stepping over streams on god-placed rocks to great effect; this kind of indulgence is fine, and can be a cure for cracked concrete as long as there’s an alternate and plainer path for workers and for handicapped).
    Or should you build a fence and post a sign to keep people from straying off the garden path just there?
    Well, of course, you make a path—informal, charming--right there, also, in addition to the former formal path, don’t worry--using the bones of what’s been carved by intuition, nature, nuance, ergonomics of carrying things through to the destination, need of speed. Right there.
    Now, how do you want to FEEL walking just through there, by way of this new path, when you enter your home?
    There is the “ritual of entrance” architects talk about to measure and consider, to weigh in.

RITUAL OF ENTRANCE
    For entries I like to use the metaphor of the Japanese tearoom when possible; the layers there, if not literally washing of the hands; or something similar to that of Judaism with its reminder in the doorway; in any case, designing the entry experience with thoughtfulness, intention, to train the limbic consciousness in leaving what’s in the world outside where it quite probably belongs: outside.
    But that’s another story.

Marie Pazyant c 2009


	D e s i g n S o l u t i o n s/L i v i n g S m a l l: C o n d o L i f e Scroll down to read Studying Space and How we use it STUDYING SPACE AND HOW WE USE IT Marie Payzant These photos are not posted here as an invitation to be simply a voyeur; I am former senior editor at Designer’s West Magazine, when it was considered the “H&G to the industry”, under Carol King, editor, and Walt Brown, Publisher. There, I’ve interviewed and written up world-class architects such as Arata Isozake (my favorite interview and person ever; Isozake’s intellectual vision, capacity for wordsmithing, and humility--though he is the most important architect to emerge from Japan in the last century--still inform me); Wolf Prix of the visionary Coop Himmelblau (Austria); Peter Shire (of the famous Memphis group, native of Los Angeles) as he was moving away from his famous teapots and into furniture and painting, as well various other designers/artists/architects. It was at the “Blue Whale” in Los Angeles, in fact, that I first stumbled upon Feng Shui, having asked at a Bruslin showroom, “No offense, certainly everything is beautiful in this showroom, as it is in every other—certainly we have the best design elements in the world featured here during Market Week, but WHY is everybody lingering here—not that your finger foods aren’t great—by why are so many flocking here? To Bruslin?” HOW FENG SHUI LANDED ON MY HEAD “Funny you should ask” said the Bruslin Showroom rep. “Do you see this window cut just here, and the red flute there, overhead? And over there, the water feature where everyone is gathering?” I followed her through that gracious, welcoming space. “We recently consulted a Feng Shui master, the oldest, the real master in the U.S,” she explained. And so began my quest. Long before it came into our vocabulary in the U.S., I had assembled a library on it, using its precepts in my home and garden and retail design. Though its Chinese history involves recognizing the auric historic “vibe” and energetics of a place—as in, recognizing graveyards, not disturbing the dead (for example, we might attribute some of Baltimore’s inheritance of violence to the fact that it was a slave state, and to what took place at Federal Hill) In a word, Feng Shui, like good architecture, is about flow, about metaphor. As a writer and a close reader, my favorite tome is Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain” for its extended metaphor. Metaphor also being my favorite part of Feng Shui, which I extend to: if I am beautifying my corner with intention, why is it not possible to clean up the world? With our intention, first, at home? Why couldn’t it simply widen out, enrich our city cores, our traffic patterns, and so forth . . .I do go on, but then don’t forget I was witness to debates by Sci Arc architects and profs in Los Angeles, debating premises of architecture with their peers from all over the globe. “Consider the visual information in Watts,” said one SCI ARC speaker. “What do you expect a child with this kind of visual information to grow up into, to become, to choose for a lifestyle, a career?” I love how he owned that for us, the wider culture. Those privileged to be there talking about such things. Those capable of changing the cityscapes, the promise underneath of change for the children. For the future. For another example in the news today, our possible next Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, grew up in Brooklyn. However, when her family moved to that public housing project, her mother did not see it as blighted or as impoverished. “It was shiny, new!” said her mother, who raised a lawyer and a doctor-to be right there. Not infrequently I muse over the ethics of building homes in the cityscape. Those who built the East Coast row homes so narrowly, a hundred and more years ago, perhaps thinking of squeezing in two or three more per city block, were designing for the future as well. Could they know, in those horse-and-carriage times, the squeeze of living that small, the dismal lack of light, the century of blight? I haven’t done the research yet, but I’m pretty certain Baltimore’s crime rate, now vying for first in the nation with Detroit, might easily be linked to depression, from lack of light in so many homes thrown up most likely without a nod to the future generations who would raise their families there. The New Amsterdam row home, which preceded these, was typically wider; there was water everywhere, and more green space. Some suggest that after the 1904 fire, trees in the urban core of Baltimore were never replanted. There are green spaces throughout the city; most overgrown, most chain-linked in. As with most things, wealth changes the human experience; the further out you can get from the city, the more greenery there is; Olmstead even planned parts of Roland Park. LOVE AND INTENTION IN INTERIOR DESIGN Having consulted Hope Gerecht of Baltimore several times in recent years to solve Feng Shui directional quandaries, who always left me with sticky notes on walls, which in all truth only doubly puzzled me—I should have tape-recorded her walk-throughs, I see in hindsight--and a lot of high-velocity comments, and her enthusiasm for space-making, I’ll never forget when she said, at the end of all this activity, “Don’t you see, Marie, it’s only love.” I love that story. If love is loving intention for what will take place in the space I work with, that’s the kind of Feng Shui I want to, and do, practice. WHY WRITE ABOUT MY OWN CONDO? I plan to write about interiors again, continuing my own studies of space and how it is best utilized, particularly for those of us downsizing, or with second homes in a second city. I also see myself as studying more of ergonomics—car interiors for certain, along with human physiology—I’m particularly interested in designing lifestyle templates, both in health routines and interior design, for the aging. Since we all are. Aging. Since my magazine “clips” for the past decade are only in fashion design and retail concepts, as designer of those--I’m starting out with what’s in front of me: my own evolving interior design theory. WE ALL EVENTUALLY SIZE DOWN Sizing down from a seven-bedroom three-level poured concrete Arts & Crafts home in Roland Park with a full basement and private alley entrance to this (pictured): a two-bedroom two-bath condo on one floor with a shared hallway, and a population of neighbors with their own health/aging concerns--although I have not much changed my neighborhood—this connotes a 180-degree change in lifestyle. My changes have come early, as most people wait longer to downsize. At fifty-two, I can still be obsessed with moving things around, and get them moved. My daughter and I change bedrooms not infrequently; although I love that, whenever she starts to sleep with me I give up the room and make it hers. She keeps wanting that; I suppose I have addicted her to change as well, but she is growing into a pre-teen and learning to organize her things, so I narrate the work and teach her: you will have to teach your college roommates, your husband, your housekeeper, yourself. Like this. Keep what you love now, fix, sell, or donate the rest. With the proceeds from what you sell, buy something—one thing--new and useful to symbolize what you are learning, doing, expanding into next. Too many things exhaust the eye. When we come in from outside, we want to find function, harmony, simplicity as much as possible. ROOM-BY-ROOM: THE SAME AS WITH A LARGER HOME Our needs evolve; at present I am “activating” the Wisdom Room in its colors, and by studying there each morning. The small size allows the eye not to rove, makes it intimate for studying at least the daily news. My rooms look nothing like these photos now, but instead look like a New York space. Living in a condo on one floor, I’ve rearranged these rooms continually. (That’s why I think I have some wisdom to offer on this subject: I would hate to think of people older than me having to tangle with this abrupt downsizing after living in enormous homes). Every room is a living room, a dining room, a newsroom, a study. Different rooms for different times of day. For cooking, serving, eating, sleeping, study, play. One beauty of the open plan is one can share space and occasional conversation while maintaining quietude and separation to get tasks finished. One minus, and a big one, is that personal rooms are in with the semiformal. So it takes more, continual diligence to keep your many projects, cooking, laundry, communications, etc. continually tidy. The former dining room now has a Teeter hang-up, library, music library, opium bed type couches. I like to file there, early. Plan the day, go through old music archives as the benefit of slicing through all the papers of the past. It’s the only place I’ve been accused by friends of sitting of still four minutes at a time. I have it shuttered off, though. It’s a girl cave, not much formal about it. The metaphor there being British, dark, contained. Since it should be green, for wealth, I have notes of green in botanical prints. Next a green wall, staghorn ferns on temple beams I’ll make into holders at the windows. NOTHING STAYS THE SAME HERE It’s been a sort of science for me, this space-making, complete with theory. Shall I write it here? It’s evolving even now. The music tray is too far away from this computer. The room I’m writing in needs double ceiling fans, but they can’t bring the ceiling down visually, so they must be light and lighthearted in design. Like a Calder mobile. I’m sure somebody’s made one. I can search the Web for that. THE ART OF SUBTRACTION Trained as an editor, I was, when we thought in terms of saving KEYSTROKES. So wasting footsteps, or steps in any process--I LOVE HENRY FORD—I have set up manufacturing lines, too, quality control lines too--make no sense to me. Moving through space, whether home or office, should be above all efficient. One method I use is photography: After looking at photos of a space I think is finished, I can detect more impediments, extra things to exhaust the eye, or to bump into, particularly on the floor. In the longe view, I look forward to one day when Baltimoreans move as New Yorkers do. What a beautiful dance, no clanging, overcrowding, staring, just the brief dance at each cross light and the unspoken adios, adieu. I see myself in demand consulting for retail concepts, including demographic and income studies, store identity, logo, lighting, display, product choice, employee training too. I’ve done everything right and everything wrong in retail. I’ve worked for the best, and built “Baltimore’s Best” (four times bestowed that award while partner at A People United) I could write a book. And mean to. ADDRESSING ABSENTEEISM WITH LIGHT Feng shui, ergonomics, five elements. I use all three, and color, sound and light with or without much budget. Always full-spectrum light to alleviate employee depression, absenteeism, more. The work is done intuitively and somewhat mercurially, without much benefit of tape measures when I go at it, (although I can tell you any measurement almost exactly) but prior to that it’s about the study of people IN space, how their needs and patterns define what shall be shaped, enjoyed, accomplished task by task and step by step within it. TEST: THE GARDEN PATH NOT TAKEN Here’s the garden metaphor. What do you do when children, even some adults, cut through your garden, despite the formal path nearby which you have clearly indicated? Should you light the path? Widen it? (A proper garden path always has room for two, side-by-side, would say Monet, but I’ve made paths that make you feel like you are a child stepping over streams on god-placed rocks to great effect; this kind of indulgence is fine, and can be a cure for cracked concrete as long as there’s an alternate and plainer path for workers and for handicapped). Or should you build a fence and post a sign to keep people from straying off the garden path just there? Well, of course, you make a path—informal, charming--right there, also, in addition to the former formal path, don’t worry--using the bones of what’s been carved by intuition, nature, nuance, ergonomics of carrying things through to the destination, need of speed. Right there. Now, how do you want to FEEL walking just through there, by way of this new path, when you enter your home? There is the “ritual of entrance” architects talk about to measure and consider, to weigh in. RITUAL OF ENTRANCE For entries I like to use the metaphor of the Japanese tearoom when possible; the layers there, if not literally washing of the hands; or something similar to that of Judaism with its reminder in the doorway; in any case, designing the entry experience with thoughtfulness, intention, to train the limbic consciousness in leaving what’s in the world outside where it quite probably belongs: outside. But that’s another story. Marie Pazyant c 2009 \| Dog Proof:Arts & Crafts, Garden Gates \| Design Solutions: Ergonomic Kitchen \| Design Solutions:Living Small, Condo Life \| \| Return Home \| Getting to Zen \| Photography \| Writing \| Marketing \| Clothing Design \| Interior Design \| Press Kit \| Contact Us \|