FS Home Design
Curated and Comfortable: Modern Architecture in Real Life
Curation also includes the things you touch and use every day. In one sitting room, we included a substantial coffee table that has enough presence to work with it, while an ultra-deep sectional makes the room a place
where you can really settle in.
by April Gahagan
When you hear the word "curated," you may think of a museum, where someone has carefully chosen what you'll see and how you'll experience it. We do much the same thing in interior design, except our starting point is a family and the way they live.
Materials, fabrics, finishes, furnishings, art, lighting and collected pieces all help tell that story. Where have the owners lived? What do they love? What have they brought with them? What feels important enough to give a place in their home?
Those questions become especially interesting in a modern home, where the architecture can have such a strong presence of its own.
In this Asheville mountain home, walls of glass frame the trees, mountains and valley beyond. The steel, wood, open staircase and soaring spaces create plenty of drama before we add a single chair or hang a painting. We wanted the interiors to respect that architecture while making room for the owners' personality.
Their art collection gave us plenty to work with. In the great room, two large, bold paintings hold the walls on either side of an expansive window wall. Between them is another remarkable image: the view across the valley. Furniture placement preserves those sightlines, allowing the art and landscape to share the room without crowding each other.
Elsewhere, the scale changes. Along the open staircase, the windows and mountain views carry much of the visual weight, so smaller pieces of art make sense. The railings are clean and straightforward, keeping the view open as you move through the house. Restraint here gives your eye a little breathing room.
We create extraordinary environments for everyday life. A beautiful room still has to accommodate morning coffee, a house full of friends, a quiet evening on the sofa, and all the routines that make a house your own.
The owners also have roots in South Florida, and we sourced many of the home's vintage light fixtures from markets near their home there. Those pieces bring history and warmth to the clean lines of the architecture. Vintage advertising art, brass lamps and a brass-based marble table continue that sense of a home assembled over time. We love a room where you can tell the pieces weren't all bought on the same afternoon.
Curation also includes the things you touch and use every day. In one sitting room, we used a tile that mimics the character of rusted metal panels to create a dramatic fireplace wall. A substantial coffee table has enough presence to work with it, while an ultra-deep sectional makes the room a place where you can really settle in.
Its neutral upholstery is soft, durable and easy to clean. That matters in a house meant for living. This is what we mean at FS Design Group when we talk about Everyday Extraordinary.
For this family, their art, vintage finds, comfortable furnishings and the Asheville landscape all play big parts in the story this home tells. The curation comes from understanding what matters to them and giving those things the right place to live.
If you're starting your own design project, take some time up front to decide the experience you want your family and your guests to have, then select the materials, fabrics, art, and environmental cues that showcase that story. You become the curator for your own design.
