Roaming Aesthetic

Design Weekend, produced by Santa Fe Interior Designers Presents in the fall, featured as one of its events a chance to wander through homes so beautiful they were difficult to leave. A map for leisurely, self-guided exploration led to eight magnificent treasures.

The perennially well-attended tour once again underscored that collaboration is the key to creating superlative interior design. The homes highlighted art collections, paid homage to the New Mexican earth and sky, and maximized architectural features. And many showcased the work of local craftsmen, galleries, and businesses. They all showed that Santa Fe cutting-edge interior design in its latest incarnations offers a highly contemporary sensibility limited neither by political, temporal, nor artistic borders.

When Small is Better

Interior design isn’t always about expanding; sometimes it can require fostering an expansive feeling even while downsizing. Designer Barbara Templeman, for example, helped clients scale down and update a 1970s interior in a renovated Quail Run condo while creating a classically chic, contemporary space. Templeman integrated keepsake furnishings, giving them the status of cherished but functional works of art.

Euro Desert Chic

Jeff Fenton and Chris Martinez of IM Design Studios worked with a couple of hip empty nesters who relocated to Santa Fe after downsizing to begin anew. The couple brought with them only their bed, some photographs and mementos, and their art collection. Architect Ted Turner designed their new home, near the Santa Fe Opera House, to honor its hilltop setting. Fenton calls Turner’s design “organic modern” because it combines clean, modern lines with organic shapes and materials. Vigas provide a touch of local tradition.

Before you play your favorite CD or watch Bogey kiss Bergman for the last time, you’ll notice the media room brimming with visual and tactile pleasures, such as the mid-century Italian chairs upholstered in a nubby orange, brown, and gold vintage Parisian fabric softening the slick lines of a butterscotch leather sofa. “Our client found the chairs right here in Santa Fe at Shiprock,” Fenton says. “He wondered if they were a little crazy, and they are. Crazy perfect.”

The custom coffee table in the media room of slate and steel, designed in collaboration with Victoria Price, was fabricated by one of the many skilled artisans Victoria Price Art & Design cultivates. Floor and table lamps, with stands of copper-covered spheres, are from American Home Design. The hot pinks, oranges, and purples in a bold floral abstract painting, which the clients collected many years ago, lift the room and add to  a playful, warm elegance that offers a sophisticated Euro feel without abandoning an authentic New Mexico touch.

Shades of MolÉ

Edy Keeler of Core Value Inc. incorporates indigenous color schemes with the art, furniture, and textiles of far-flung places. Keeler, whose design practice includes working with architects and consumers from the ground up, chooses everything from floor materials and plaster to stucco, tile, lighting, furniture, and fabrics. She calls this the Mauve House, for its molé-colored stucco exterior. The décor is as spicy as the ancient Mesoamerican cacao drink that reminded the Mayan people of the gods.

Keeler likes to twirl the color wheel. At this house’s dining room table she combined elegant chairs in shades of citrus and eggplant. South African sculpture in deep red felt emulates a fanciful rock. A Mia Monde sculpture from Mali graces a buffet opening through which your eyes can feast on a Eugene Newmann painting from Linda Durham Contemporary Art. In the living room, on a burgundy Tibetan rug, sits a translucent eggplant-colored resin tabletop on stainless-steel legs designed by Robert Zachary.

Mixing Neutrals with Molten Jewels

Those who followed Design Weekend’s map to the spacious condominium that designer Pam Duncan remodeled found a desert oasis where Spanish-colonial-style fountains graced outdoor patios. Inside, the living room’s neutral walls and upholstery kept the eye focused on a magnificent American studio-art glass collection of large sculptures in jewel tones.

Throughout, furnishings neatly combined traditional and contemporary motifs. Shutters and cabinetry were creamy white and unobtrusive. The dining room, another spot of color, crackled with hot-pink-and-orange plaid chairs as well as a twig chandelier.

Spicy Palette

Steffany Hollingsworth welcomed guests into her Chicago client’s warm Santa Fe getaway, originally built some 40 years ago. After gutting and reworking a relatively small kitchen space, Hollingsworth and her collaborator, Joan Viele of Kitchen Designs, made it user-friendly. Now it features a cozy breakfast nook with a built-in banco. The spicy color palette ranges from chile green to butternut squash, curry, cinnamon, and paprika. Saffron accents travel into the living room in a gorgeous Oushak rug. What were tile floors are now covered in wood and travertine. A copper-topped custom coffee table exudes the warmth of melting brown sugar.

Coptic Scrolls and Spanish Crosses The founder of HVL Interiors, Heather Van Luchene, was on hand to answer questions in a home she designed for a widely traveled couple whose art and furniture collection spans both time and geography. The disparate objets d’art that Van Luchene highlighted in her design scheme include ancient carved Indian temple doors, Coptic scrolls, wrought-iron Spanish crosses, and a sleek Isamu Noguchi coffee table. An African sculpture and Native American pottery float on vintage Lucite shelves. Enhanced by desert views, Van Luchene’s butterscotch, tobacco, and white palette shimmers like subtly hammered gold leaf.

LegorReta and Lajeskie

Kris Lajeskie Design Group Inc. has offices in Santa Fe, New York, and Milan. So it’s no surprise that Lajeskie’s sensibility is transnational. Impeccably elegant, Lajeskie offered Design Weekend attendees a chance to wander her client’s spacious indoor-outdoor home that doubles as a gallery for a formidable art collection. The house, which world-renowned Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta designed, maximizes the interplay of light and shadow. Sensuous in its simplicity, Lajeskie’s design features clean lines, understated silhouettes, bright colors, and varied textures that complement large but unobtrusive architectural patterns.

Lucky Luke

Need elegance and comfort in tight spaces? German-born designer Franziska Neumann and her partner, David Wharram, are experts at solving this common design dilemma. They gained international acclaim, including recognition by Oprah Winfrey, after turning their 350-square-foot Manhattan apartment into a showpiece for efficient yet whimsical green design. With 33 years of combined experience, the couple works with recycled raw materials, environmentally friendly paints, natural textiles, and playful lighting.

In the bedroom they created for Design Weekend, Neumann and Wharram, known as Lucky Luke Design, showcased one of their signature pieces: a bed that serves as night table, dresser, and all-around happiness maker. Custom-designed headboard lighting suits clients’ pragmatic needs as well as private fantasies. Lucky Luke can create a constellation of stars to encourage romance or get practical for reading—or both. Or stay in bed, browse the Sunday papers, and nibble on brunch. The design duo turns doors into shelves and shelves into gravity-defying storage space that makes rooms seem larger because they don’t touch the floor. Possibilities abound.

“Franziska is the designer,” says Wharram. “I’m the engineer.” He’s also an expert electrician who designs and installs high-end lighting fixtures, to which Oprah can testify: One of the team’s lights was featured on her show’s small-space special.

The Lucky Luke team has worked in London, New York, South Africa, and Japan, all places where living small but elegant is a mandatory art. The team’s work has been featured in design publications in Japan, in Metropolitan Home, and on HGTV.

Project no. 8

Organizers called the last house on the interior design tour Project No. 8. The collaborative effort allowed designers who are young or who recently moved to the area to strut their stuff. Working in a new, unoccupied home, a number of designers begged and borrowed furniture, rugs, lighting, and even art. Emily Alexis, born and raised in New Mexico, and Design Weekend’s 2007/2008 student representative from the American Society of Interior Designers New Mexico chapter, designed a downstairs office. Its large windows framed in wine-colored trimmings offer ground-level views of landscaping. Dark brown leather chairs and a cranberry rug from American Country Collection work beautifully with an airy but practical glass desk donated by Victoria Price. A recent graduate of the Art Center Design College in Albuquerque, Alexis has already set up shop in Santa Fe.

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