Interiors can dare to be be loud again. After a decade of tasteful sludgy shades and developer beige, homeowners are using their abodes as a canvas to express their personality through high-contrast patterns and mind-bending colour choice. A selection of these are featured in the coffee-table book, Kaleidoscope, an intoxicating trip around the world that stops off in the homes of highly visual individuals.
Sven Ehmann is editor in chief at Gestalten, the hip creative hub in Berlin that has just published the title. Its catalogue includes Monocole magazine's travel guide series, as well as titles on architecture and interiors, cartography, infographics, avant-garde fashion and sexy sports like surfing. He says he's in the business of "finding stories and creating experiences that work well in print, but also in an exhibition space, shop and display".
The beauty of this book is that for the most part these are spaces inhabited by real people, albeit mainly designers of one sort or another. It is the fact that they are homes that these individuals occupy that makes the book more fascinating and will, hopefully, tempt readers to make a bolder statement with their own space.
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A blue-and-white confection owned by London-based interior designer Danielle Moudaber will, at first glance remind older readers of a Marian shrine, perhaps one owned by a mad cake decorator, as the space is full of the kind of ornate plasterwork that a bridezilla might commission. But look again and you will see that the space includes interesting vintage and antique pieces sourced by her cousin, a decorative and primitive arts dealer, much of which is decoratively accessible to affordable to mere mortals. A planter, instead of a chandelier, hangs from one ceiling rose. It has a mirrored base to reflect light into the space. The floorboards are painted high- maintenance white, with graphic black motifs painted onto the boards in place of rugs.
So how does the Gestalten team find these visually arresting spaces? While they have feet on the ground in the more unusual parts of the world, the majority of the research work is done online and includes plugging into its network of design-savvy individuals, which includes photographers and architects who, says Ehmann, “work outside their core capacity”. He wants to know what someone, as a photographer, for instance, is looking at now. That is the book’s point of difference.
The weekend country escape of French decorator Elizabeth Leriche in Thure, about 100km south of Tours in west France, may be miles from the sea, but that hasn't stopped her from taking inspiration from the life aquatic. A giant starfish clings to the hall wall and in the lounge the wood chairs have coral red frames, while a cabinet of curiosities is stuffed to the gills with vintage coral and giant clamshells.
Some of the homes feel more like stage sets than a fully functioning abode, but that, Sven says, is a plus. “The fact that someone lives there is interesting and adds a personal story to the pictures. It gives the book a very different quality. The audience for this title comprises professionals and semi-professionals who like a clean photographic approach. But they are also curious. They wonder what it would be like to really live there, and ask questions like, ‘do they ever take their books off the shelves?’ ”
In New York, an upper east side des res on Central Park West has been given a warm and womby treatment thanks to its bold use of the colour carmine red. A book arrangement, the kind readers will wonder at, is used to decorate two walls, while a flagstone rug underneath breaks up the strong colour.
Because the publisher is trying to surprise the people that follow them who operate in a social media noise-filled world, they’re quite secretive about what they do.
Ehmann is not interested in anything that has already featured on Instagram or been discussed on Snapchat. It's all too immediate and already forgotten.
The audience we’re talking to wants to be excited, he explains, “Each book needs to look deliberately different enough to catch his discerning eye.”
There’s a certain level of confidence to the homemakers featured. They are not necessarily big personalities, but they are confident. What they do isn’t shouty. They know what they want and are able to choose it and articulate it.
While Ehmann finds the projects visually interesting, he doesn't necessarily want to live quite as loudly as Kaleidesope suggests. He likes old furniture because it had a life before him and he owns some pieces by a designer he has featured, but almost more important to him are photos not taken in a digital era. He says he's not attached to his belongings. Having two kids, aged three and 10, has changed his relationship with his home. "You need space for kids and you get used to the chaos they bring to your life." A chaos that doesn't necessarily deal with objects scattered decoratively across mantlepieces and bookcases.
The book is a kneejerk reaction to globalisation where you see the same furniture in Sao Paolo and Seoul, smell the same candle scents in each place, and despite the distance can sip on the same coffee for breakfast
In Kaleidoscope what you can see is what he calls the dandy version of an apartment, a space that is confident, flamboyant, self- aware and outgoing, where carefully selected items document your life, a mix of souvenirs from travels, items you inherited and some new stuff.
Try it, he says. “Make your white box your own.”
Kaleidoscope: Living in Color and Patterns by Sven Ehmann and Robert Klanten is published by Gestalten
