By Lance McCarthy
Designing spaces is a lot like cooking a gourmet meal. It seems pretty easy and intuitive, especially when you see it on TV. All the ingredients are familiar, how hard can it be? But the harder you work, sometimes the further you get from what you wanted, and often your finished product looks nothing like what you had imagined. Happened to me just this morning with my “autumn pumpkin oatmeal”. Thanks a lot Rachael Ray!
In my line of work, I get to go into a lot of houses (by my count, almost 200 so far this year), and one of the things that I notice is how often the space in houses just isn’t working very well. These are normal, everyday houses, probably a lot like yours, but something about them is not functioning as well as it should. We end up spending a lot of time helping people that are having to work around their houses to live their lives.
I think one of the reasons for this is that often, homeowners, contractors and designers/architects are ignoring the Secret Rules of Design. Now what, you may ask, are the Secret Rules Of Design? and why do I keep capitalizing the words “Secret”, “Rules”, “Of”, and “Design”? I’m glad you asked. I’m capitalizing mostly because it is Fun. And I have asked my good friend Joel (with a capital J) the Architect to share some of the Secret Rules Of Design.
Rules of Design are a lot like our culture’s rules about who it’s ok to kiss. You can obey the rules or break the rules, but just don’t act like there aren’t rules or you might end up somewhere you didn’t want to be. Exhibit A. That’s me treating you to a super awkward video. You’re welcome.