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a sense of workplace – three

This is the final installment of a three part series spotlighting the McAlpine office interiors. This week: McAlpine Booth and Ferrier‘s Atlanta office.

With a toehold firmly established in Nashville, MBF set its sights on Atlanta. Hartsfield International allows fluid access to an ever expanding client base; the Atlanta Decorative Arts Center and nearby shops offer designers great shopping and personal access to important vendors.

For 10 years, the original Atlanta branch was located in quaint Avondale Estates, seven miles outside the city center. Recently relocated within the bustling complex of ADAC, this iteration is an open studio space artfully defined with furniture, an enormous chandelier and floor to ceiling panels of gossamer drapery. These twelve foot tall fabric shields delightfully filter and hourly interpret the light from the storefront back through two flanking rows of desks and drawings tables to the conference table nestled for meetings.

In this inspired and light embellished place, with clients as muse, the designers gather dreams, hopes and desires to create a loving sense of home. The calm and contemplative use of large scale pieces, bounty from travels, stills the air aswirl with imagery, texture and color.

Here, the daily creative effort is performed with joy and genuine care for those destined beneficiaries. Here, designers reach toward that which is good and lasting, appreciating the gifted foundation they’ve inherited and ever eager for all that remains to be done, seen and created in the name of Home.

Detail photos by Kris Kendrick

a sense of workplace – two

This is the second installment of a three part series spotlighting the McAlpine office interiors – next week: McAlpine Booth and Ferrier‘s Atlanta office.

Originally germinated in Montgomery, Alabama, MBF Interiors has grown into a partnership of offices in Nashville, Atlanta and New York and works with McAlpine Tankersley clients as well as others nationwide. One constant of the firm is affection for change. In many ways this “band of gypsies” is happiest searching the U.S. and Europe for extraordinary antiques and furnishings. But it is in their clients they find the greatest opportunity for discovery: they come with wide ranging desires for their homes and set them off on new paths, challenging the designers to create unique and truly bespoke interiors.

The Nashville studio is located in the Old Braid Electrical warehouse in downtown Nashville. It remains a great store and working laboratory for the firm. Upon entry, you find a thirteen foot long steel factory table absconded from a Paris buying trip. This table is the stage where a variety of art, objects and curios dance daily. The studio “adopts” these precious objects before moving them on to permanent residence in one of their interiors.

Past the entrance there is a beautiful assemblage of furnishings and books which serve as both library and small meeting space. Then, just past the library is the studio proper which is an open plan, allowing the designers to interact in a collaborative environment. The workspace provides custom designed drafting tables and shelving for crafted interior study models, favored and featured hardware and client materials. The office space terminates in a large resource room, a treasury stocked with the best fabrics, trim and materials the world has to offer. This trove is the real heart of the office. Crafting beauty is a messy endeavor, and just before a client presentation, the expansive center worktable is strewn with samples, binders and even furniture staged for its debut to clients.

All photos by Kris Kendrick

seating group dynamics

Where in the world do you start when you begin to design a house?

This question is often asked of us. Some assume we visualize the house as an object in the landscape and begin there. Some architects do work this way; they see buildings as sculptures meant to be inhabited. We, however, design from a different perspective. We approach the creation of a house from the inside out.

The most rudimentary space is created when a person sits across from another. All rooms are meant to embrace this most basic structure. This simple fellowship necessitates a room, this room then requires auxiliary spaces and this congregation of rooms eventually grows into a building. The seed of this plant, though, is always a gathering of furniture.

If you start with an auspicious room, the exterior of the building will follow suit. A house is like a great and altruistic person, if its heart is pure and balanced then its outside will project that inner harmony. We approach architecture from an interior point of view because we wholeheartedly believe the content is more important than the packaging. A pretty box cannot atone for a poor, ill-conceived gift.

The most exceptional house in the world begins with the simple melody of a sofa, a pair of chairs and a fireplace. The rest is orchestration.

no white after labor day?

One of the most time-honored fashion traditions is to pack up the white clothes after Labor Day. Historians think this maxim stems from class divisions at the turn of the century when lightweight clothes were a symbol of the well-to-do. Back then, Labor Day marked the time the affluent returned from vacation, stowed the summer clothes and went back to school and work.

Whether or not you follow this unwritten fashion convention, the presence of white in interior design is welcome year-round; it transcends all seasons. It’s classic, yet fresh. As the most basic of neutrals, white’s presence crisply invigorates an interior and un-muddies the palate. In a traditional or contemporary interior, it serves as a bed of rice ready to accept a sauce of any flavor.

chairman

“You can’t have too many chairs or too many shirts”

Bobby McAlpine

Bobby began collecting them (chairs, not shirts) as a teenager. His personal tastes lean toward the small open chair or stool – the chess piece that can be arranged at will when intimate conversation is called for. Chairs are the most characterful pieces one can own and require different behaviors of people. They do, however, tend to call out to their own: the lounger seeks the enveloping arms of the club chair and the flittering, vigilant host will perch on the edge of a hard seat or stool. Beckoning rooms should offer a resting place for every personality.

When Bobby decided to create his own collection of chairs, the magpie in him took flight and collected bits and pieces from the rich lineage of classic furniture design. These influences were woven together in a distinctly modern pattern and the McAlpine Home furniture collection was born. His explorations in reimagining the common chair are evident in his upholstered pieces from Lee Industries and modern wood heirlooms from MacRae.

Rooms are the chambers in the house’s heart and so should be populated with chairs of differing temperament. It’s like composing a perfect cocktail party guest list; if all your guests were just alike, what a bore of an evening that would be….

finding home