Materials of Interior Design- come learn with me

In my never-ending quest for new experiences that will help me do my job, I have enrolled in an interior design class on materials and finishes. As far as color goes, it's important to be able to translate color into a variety of other materials, like stone, fabric, metal, wood, ceramics... the list goes on.

So, last week was my first day of class.

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For our first assignment, we are designing a prototype hotel room. We took a tour of a couple nice hotels in San Francisco, the Westin, and the Four Seasons, for an up-close and personal examination of a typical room at each establishment.

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The first room we saw, at the Westin, was clean, elegant, but didn't knock my socks off. The marketing and sales rep went on and on about how they wanted their rooms to feel like home, and be cozy and inviting. It was rather amusing to hear the customer service reps wax prosaic about design elements.

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When our concierge at the second hotel started going on about how white paint is a must to make a ceiling feel higher, and that all light colors open up a space, while all dark colors close in a space, I had to bite my tongue to remain politely silent. It's really hard to keep silent when you know someone has it all wrong.

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Take this amazing room at the Gramercy Hotel in NYC. I don't see these gorgeous ceilings getting in the way. (of course, it doesn't hurt that they are nice and tall!)

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For the first step of our multi-part assignment, we have to come up with a client profile, and settle on a look based on some historical style. The hotel has to be located in San Francisco, and we have to use the same 350 foot floor plan. What would you do?!

You call -that- swanky?

The New York Jets have a new training facility. It was a massive $75 million dollar investment, and for some reason, the press is raving about it. But some of us are less than impressed. My color colleague Kelly from Arte Styling wrote an impassioned letter to the editor of Fast Company Magazine in response to an article they published about the Jets' new digs.

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"Although the project is no doubt 'architecturally sound', and takes into consideration some important functional needs, there is one important component that the architects/designers and the sports organization neglected to address - color. I am absolutely dismayed by the complete disregard of the importance of color in the design. There is an overabundance of white, which makes the facility feel cold, sterile and empty. Is this really the message that the organization wants to send to their players, employees and the general public? The facility looks more like a psychiatric hospital than a place to foster teamwork, vitality, and strength."

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I completely agree. To me, this building looks like any other commercial/industrial complex, embracing blandness.

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According to the press release released by the architecture firm for this project, SOM, this is the "newest, largest and most ambitious and holistic training facility in the National Football League." Holistic? Ambitious? Maybe in regards to other aspects. But they totally dropped the ball when it came to color.

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Oh yeah, I'm inspired now. (says she, dripping with sarcasm)

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I'd like to know if other colors were considered for this massive indoor field space. I would think that if designers were trying to simulate a true outdoor environment, they would have thought beyond the natural turf field to the walls and ceilings surrounding them. What about a nice sky blue? The thought of spending any amount of time in a huge white box with harsh fluorescent lighting is anything but inspiring.

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From the field, you can see into the executives offices behind a wall of glass windows. Nothing but white, as far as the eye can see. "The architect’s vision was to create a focused learning and working environment that would enable the Jets to train at a higher level, with more efficiency and effectiveness and with total focus on football," according to SOM.

How is it possible that with all the research and effort that was channeled into this project, no-one bothered to examine how color effects work productivity? It blows my mind.

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