There are certain parts of the home that I think embellishment feels cozy and inviting. Then there are other environments, for example, the living room, where I don't have a ton of items on the table.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I used to love a well-arranged room: the furniture, the fabric, the lighting.
I like living sparsely. In the main room, there's no furniture - no tables, no chairs, no coffee table - not even a decaffeinated coffee table.
The room has to be comfortable; the house has to look habitable.
If you actually keep things very organized and clutter-free, you can have more furniture than you think you can in a small space.
Even on a personal note, my dressing table downstairs is crowded with things, like a mini landscape. It's a city with buildings and towers and roads. There's a pool and a little park. When I move something around it becomes a different tableau.
When you come to a hotel room, you want it to be grand, functional and beautiful. But you don't want things that are not useful. Sometimes you go to hotels and there are all these frames and pictures of people you don't know, and you end up hiding everything in the drawer, and then housekeeping come and put it out again.
I love having beautiful furniture and things, but I don't want my space to look like a showroom.
When I'm home, I like a cozy, comfortable, calming space.
For me, the excitement in architecture revolves around the idea and the phenomenon of the experience of that idea. Residences offer almost immediate gratification. You can shape space, light, and materials to a degree that you sometimes can't in larger projects.
A well-designed home has to be very comfortable. I can't stand the aesthetes, the minimal thing. I can't live that way. My home has to be filled with stuff - mostly paintings, sculpture, my fish lamps, cardboard furniture, lots of books.