Product Description

emotional ROOMS the sensual interiors of benjamin noriega-ortiz Named by House Beautiful as one of "America's Most Brilliant Decorators" for ten consecutive years, Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz is recognized as one of the most stylish and influential of today's interior designers. His sensuous, glamorous, and ethereal work captures an unusual sense of openness and light through the use of color, materials, architecture, and the unexpected integration of fashion. Noriega-Ortiz has traveled the world to design spaces for such clients as rock superstar Lenny Kravitz, bestselling author Laura Esquivel, and celebrity photographer Mark Seliger. Now, with Emotional Rooms, he shares his process with anyone who may not have access to a high-end designer but wants a home or workspace that is at once beautiful and true to themselves. Noriega-Ortiz brings together in this book not only photographs of his interiors but personal images that will inspire and evoke the designer within us all. With stunning full-color photographs and clear, concise essays, he guides readers through the essential principles of design -- color, architecture, furniture, and lighting -- and gives advice on how homeowners can prevent common mistakes. He shows them how to break the rules, ignore trends and labels, stop pleasing others, and decorate their homes to reflect their own true desires. For those influenced by passing fads and fashions, Noriega-Ortiz's essential advice is: Emotion is always a better guide than intellect when it comes to creating a richly satisfying environment. Home truly is where the heart is, and this famous designer has what it takes to help readers put the heart back into their homes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100385 in eBooks
• Published on: 2007-06-09
• Released on: 2007-06-09
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction

Interior design books typically fall into two categories. The "how-to"book is the one that "walks" the reader through every step of how tocreate, say, a feather-covered lamp or a bedroom that feels like theocean. It would teach them how to install a gauzy curtain to give anoffice alcove a hint of dreaminess. It would tell them what kind ofmaterial to use, where to order it, where to buy the track lighting andhow to attach it to the ceiling. The other type of interior design bookis for inspiration. This is the idea behind Emotional Rooms:inspiration. I'll show you the sources behind my inspiration to producemy interior design work. I'll encourage and provoke you to look intoyour own experiences in life to find what will inspire you to produceinteriors that you can call your own. I believe that by showing what andhow I see, you will come to understand how to use your own experiences.That is the best reference you can use to determine and drive your owndesign. Often clients become so preoccupied with buying what they thinkis the perfect sink, just the right sofa, and so on, that they fail tobreathe and think about what's best for he space. The most important andfirst thing to decide is how you want the room to "feel." When I decideon a strong emotional concept such as serenity, everything else fallsinto place. Too many instructions can confine creativity, and my designsare about freedom, not confinement. I treat interior design as an art,not a craft. There is no "correct" way to design a room. In fact, thefirst thing one has to do is to forget the "correct" way.

To accomplish serenity, for instance, consistency of color is extremelyimportant. When you look at furniture as objects with form and color,you remove some of their reality. The objects become individualsculptures that you arrange in space. The shape, color, and feel of anobject -- rather than preconceptions about its purpose -- are what tell anartist where to place it. As the reality goes away, one is able to seethings one could not see before, such as the negative space between theobjects, which is as important as the objects themselves. One alsobegins to see that every object has a color, and one starts to treatcolor as another "object." Once reality -- the intellectual idea of what aroom is for -- goes away, the emotions are free to arrange the room. Theresult is a space that elicits an emotional response. Therefore becomingwhat I call emotional rooms.

A room can make you feel calm and serene or agitated and uncomfortable.People are often uncomfortable in their own homes because they choose avariety of furniture and objects that they believe others would acceptand be impressed by, rather than what would truly make them happy. Theysettle for pleasing others and denying themselves the satisfaction ofself-indulgence. Life in New York City, where I have been living formore than twenty-five years, is inherently stressful. As a consequence,it's extremely important to come home to a shelter that takes me awayfrom the outside hustle and bustle. When a person gets home, he or sheshould step into his fantasy, her peace.

process

The four elements of design for interiors are architecture, color, furniture selection, and lighting. Architecture is the space itself. Color brings emotions to the space and is of primary importance. Then you select the objects. The pedigree of furniture is not the key to success -- as many would believe. The key is, rather, what the furniture will provide to the space and the inhabitants. Finally, lighting -- this is when everything gets revealed. The right choice will either highlight or obscure an object.

architecture

After meeting with a client and establishing the program, it is important to look at the architecture of the space: the structure that defines the void that people fill. Alignment as well as outside vistas are extremely important and should be defined early on. Ask yourself where you will most likely spend your time in the room. And what you see from the room, out the window or door, is almost as important as what you see in the room. The color and feel of the landscape, urban or rural, affects the perception of every interior space. Look at the way the elements in Nature relate to one another. Look at the way the vegetation grows and what direction the sun sets. Imagine that you are in the wild and you have to establish camp. Most likely you will choose the most beautiful view for your sitting area. You will choose to rest where the smells and the sounds are best for you. The freedom that you experience in the wild should be adapted to your needs at home.

color

If you want the room to feel calm and serene, which is my favorite emotion for a room, make sure you repeat one color as much as possible. My favorite color is blue-green. In Spanish I call it bruma. This is the color of water at the wave crest when it hits the seashore. It is also the word used to represent haze, mist, or fog. In my experience, abundance of one color produces serenity. Think of how you feel when you are looking at the vast ocean while on a cruise ship. The serenity that you feel is mostly a result of the abundance of one color: blue, green, or blue-green. When the color gets interrupted with too much white, let's say waves, the view is not as serene. This also happens when you look at mountains covered in vegetation. The abundance of green in the lush mountains of Puerto Rico generates a profound calmness.

When choosing a color, remember that color is in everything you see, andthat the way you perceive color has a lot to do with lighting. Not onlyis the lighting that the color provides important but also the waycolors reflect one another. John Saladino, my mentor in interior designand a marvelous colorist, always reminded me of Joseph Albers's famoustheory that you can only see color against color. In applying color Iuse a basic principle, darker rooms should have darker colors, andlighter rooms should have lighter colors. Consider how people look -- youincluded -- inhabiting such a room. The result is what will render theenvironment comfortable for you.

It is important to remember that materials have color and that they helpyou create a mood. Wood is a color, as well as metal and plastic and soon. If you cover a dark wood chair in blue fabric, the chair is notblue. However, if you paint the wood to match the fabric, the colorenhances the expression of the shape, and the object therefore becomesthe expression of an emotion. I use translucent fabrics and materials toseparate rooms, for window coverings, and even for slipcovers andbedspreads. Translucent fabrics cast a "fog" over the view, which helpsin diffusing reality. (Women have known this fact for years and theyimplement it by the use of hosiery.) These types of fabrics silencecolors and form, delivering them to you virtually out of focus. I'veheard that in the early days of film, Hollywood studios used to requirethat a "gauze" or "gel" be placed on the camera lens during close-ups inorder to remove imperfections from the actors' faces. That is what Ilike to do, veil reality's imperfections.

furniture selection

Think of furniture as sculpture and you will open your mind to an infinite world of possibilities. Furniture is no longer a chair or a table, but a combination of shapes and colors. Again, the pedigree of a furniture piece is not what should lead your decision-making. The piece may be rare, expensive, fabulous yet not serve the space. The history of an object, its age or previous famous owner, is not even visible to theeye. This history must be learned and therefore does not exist in theworld of emotions. As a result, I dispose of it very early on in thedesign process. Combining styles is easy. Again, the intellect mayobject, but if you isolate styles by shape, color, and scale, you willfind that they have more in common than you first thought. For example,if you have a collection of furniture from different periods and youupholster them in the same fabric, they definitely will be at ease inthe same room. The same if your furniture has curves or angles. Theshapes will "talk" to each other. Two very different curved lamps, forexample, will find harmony if placed so that the attribute they share incommon -- their curves -- is what is most striking to the eye.

The furniture layout is part of the architecture of the space. Furniture is no more than buildings within an interior urban landscape anyway. When I studied urban design, I learned that the shape of a void is as important as the textures and colors surrounding it, and that what is behind a building is not as important as what you see in front of your eyes. The same principle applies to interior design. When you look at a floor plan, you have to remember that this is not how you experience a layout. You donot experience every room at once, from above. You experience it room byroom, from the inside. While your intellect might tell you that all therooms must agree with one another, what is behind the walls or in otherrooms should not concern you -- unless you find a way of being in more thanone room at a time!

Furniture placement is an art in itself. I like to approach it in twoways: (a) creating conversation groups (the practical way), and (b)creating beautiful sets (the camera-ready way). Depending on thefunction of the room, you can decide if it's meant to be lived in orseen. Transitional spaces uch as corridors and vestibules can afford tobe overtly dramatic. But one needs tranquillity in a bedroom. Often,when I see pictures of beautiful interiors, I know that the room hasbeen created for the camera. It does not mean that everything has beenchanged. What it means is that, because the camera sees the room in adifferent way than the human eye, the room has to be composed to reflectwhat it really looks like in person. By trying my best to see a room theway a camera sees it, I learned to edit and keep only what I considernecessary. When I am designing, I "place" the camera in the room and ittells me if the room is go...