Daily, on the DesignQuotient™ blog, DesignCoach™ Los Angeles interior designer James Swan answers readers’ questions or tests your knowledge about the worlds of decorating and design.
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Today on the DesignCoach: Words to Design By
With the rapid development of the business of Design and Decoration a new vocabulary had come into being. The introduction of periodical magazines devoted to interiors, coupled with a wide range of personalities, education experience and life experiences of those in the design field means words have been co-opted from adjacent fields (fashion, art, architecture, history, archeology) and given new applications and often altered meanings. At times words, terms and phrases have been manufactured to “tell the story” in a more effective manner. “Open Floor Plan” would be an example as would be “Room Divider” and “Accessories” each harnessing common usage to express a design element that is of the moment in which we live. Understanding the language is key to understanding the industry.
Accessories: “The little things that make a big difference in the total effect of interior decorating” as noted by Betty Pepis in her book Interior Decoration from A to Z (Doubleday & Co., Inc. 1965). Rooms filled with primary furniture and fixture items seem dull and hollow without these components of personality and individual expression.
Room Divider: In an Open Floor Plan, a Room Divider is decorative and architectural devise that replaces a full wall with a partial wall often constructed of poles, cascades of beads or other see through mediums. Greatly favored in 1950’s and 1960’s architecture and design.
Beads are back.....
Open Floor Plan: An architectural devise in residential space planning where by conventional walls between rooms are eliminated resulting in one large open space; often combining the living room, dining room and foyer then relying on furniture placement to identify the intended use of space.
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