Bridge For Design Spring 2014 Bridge For Design Spring 2014 Issue | Page 137

INSPIRED BY | Richard Shapiro

‘I

have always been obsessed with history, distant lands and
the idea of attempting to transport myself back, in a timetraveller’s way, to a different time and place. My medium
was, and remains, design. Not the decorative or pretty kind,
not the text book version, but rather the sort of casually
orchestrated design, which I find all over Europe and which
expresses an attitude which is completely different to that to be
found in America.
After years of travel, I was struck and fascinated by the old
surfaces and patinas I discovered on European buildings, which had
been left to continue their eternally corrosive path. In America, the
slightest blemish immediately brings out a house painter or a bottle
of industrial solvent!
In Europe, I found myself walking up to walls and putting my face
as close as possible to the surface, in order to absorb and analyse
the antiquity that Europeans take so much for granted.
I wanted to determine how and if it were possible to duplicate
such patinas artificially for myself once I returned home.
I soon realised that the more decorated and engineered an interior
or exterior looked, the less I liked it. The prettier it got, the more
it repulsed me.

OPPOSITE: The garden pavilion was built in 2001 and is based on the
16th-century Palladian portico of the Villa Chiericati in Vancimuglio. Its six
and a half metre high columns are made of redwood, with resin capitals
and fibreglass bases, which have been distressed to look like stone.
THIS PAGE: A French-style gilded sofa covered in red damask.
Bridge for Design Spring 2014

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