One of our favorite things as designers is seeing the way home holds us through life’s different seasons. In “normal times,” we see this as a home growing with us as children are born, relationships are started or ended, and as aging parents move in, and grown children move out. But the COVID pandemic forced so many of us to test the limits of that care beyond anything “normal,” as we pushed our homes to support home, work, school, gym, play, and rest concurrently.
And once the acute crisis was over, and routines returned to pre-pandemic cadences? Some of those emergency space solutions lingered, morphing from the help they were during lockdown into hindrances in our present lives.
Our client approached us with just such a problem: when the pandemic hit, her dining room table became her home office and classroom, where she taught as a university professor. But five years on, and with hybrid work an increasing norm, her home “office” still commandeered half of the dining room table, depriving her of any sense of separation between work and home, and depriving the entire family of a functional place to dine together. In short, the home needed defining and refining to meet the contemporary needs of the family.
What didn’t need to change were the elements already working beautifully throughout the home: the gorgeous parquet floors, the soothing blue-gray walls, and furniture and art pieces that spoke to the family’s life together. Those all became the foundation for the home’s next chapter.
We complemented the inherent warmth that the parquet flooring and abundant natural light brought to the dining room with sophisticated silver and wood tones.
The marble-look, porcelain glass top dining table with gray veining takes center stage, flanked by modern dining chairs in custom silver fabric.
Clean, modern lines in the polished chrome legs of the chairs and the new display cabinet mimic the lines of the existing furniture pieces, creating a cohesive, contemporary design language within the assemblage of old and new.
The marble and walnut table also ties into the kitchen palette beyond, linking the two spaces with an aesthetic cohesion that didn’t previously exist.
A favorite detail is the sculptural dining table base that repeats the geometry of the parquet floors without distracting from or competing with its natural beauty.
When discussing dining table needs, the client named an extendable dining table as a priority to accommodate large family gatherings. This dining table seamlessly transforms without the need for extension leaves or bulky undercarriage storage, maintaining its sleek silhouette regardless of table length.
We exchanged the existing curio for a modernist, glass-backed cabinet. The unique construction allows the room’s cool wall color to shine through, provides more visual room for the client’s china collection to breathe, and cuts a more streamlined silhouette despite its larger footprint.
In addition, we intentionally selected this piece for its dark wood stain and polished aluminum X-form base, which repeats the finish and form of the homeowner’s existing sideboard, creating a natural relation between the two pieces.
Adjacent to the dining room was an underutilized sunroom. It served as a home for indoor plants, an exercise room, and a practice space for the family’s musician son. It had a catch-all vibe, with no cohesive purpose, and proved the perfect spot to transform into a true home office.
Slim-framed étagères provide ample storage for the professor’s extensive library and art collection, and create a striking backdrop against the existing dark blue wall. No longer confined to the end of the dining table, our client can now breathe fully in an office all her own.
A sit-stand desk provides the flexibility the dining room table never could, and the privacy screen along the desk edge also conceals wiring and a retractable ergonomic keyboard tray.
A sophisticated recliner, console tables for the plants, and a reading light join the plants and exercise bike, bringing intention to a previously cluttered corner. The recliner’s proportions also enable their son to still play his guitar comfortably, ensuring the music-practice feature original to the space remains.
The greatest allure of the newly defined office? Pocket doors that close at the end of the day, separating work from life at home.
One additional request the clients made was to create a welcoming entry. While their original console had plenty of storage, the family realized they never used it, and instead needed something beautiful to greet them and an accessible spot to kick off their shoes.
Since storage wasn’t needed, we opted for a statement console and custom cocktail ottomans that tuck under seamlessly. The striated, silvery sky-blue fabric creates a soothing tonal contrast to the wall, and concealed casters make the ottomans easy to pull out and back for daily shoe changes.
The entryway also allowed for the addition of new materiality, which we introduced through the console’s white travertine top and aluminum base in a dark bronze finish. The result makes for a striking piece of functional sculpture.
Now all three spaces connect seamlessly through a refined, contemporary aesthetic, while maintaining the definition the clients’ current lives require, enabling their home to continue what it does best: support the family in their next chapter.
