In the past year or so, architect Bobby McAlpine has shifted to a less busy schedule and, as a result, has gotten way more done. And, he says, his new work life is likely to stay.
“I have not busied myself with travel and hotels and airplanes. I have concentrated on work, and I have gotten to sit in one place for months,” Alpine said. “I hope I remember to not resume my old pattern. I know that’s not how we’re wired … but I’ve loved the slowdown.”
It was a little over a year ago when the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the world; organizers of the annual Design in Bloom event had to contact McAlpine and other speakers that they were postponing the event to summer. Summer turned to fall and then a whole new year; now Design in Bloom is back on the schedule.
The full 2020 lineup will be on hand at the Houston Design Center, including McAlpine and his business partner, interior designer Ray Booth; floral designer Laura Dowling; and landscape designer Keith Williams. Their panel will be moderated by Margot Shaw, founder and editor-in-chief of Flower Magazine. Additionally, the speakers will give individual presentations and demonstrations and sign copies of their books.
McAlpine and Booth agreed that many families working and attending school from home have assessed their houses as inadequate and are stepping up with new furnishings, remodeling, adding pools and outdoor pavilions.
Who: Interior designer Ray Booth, architect Bobby McAlpine, floral designer Laura Dowling, landscape designer Keith Williams and Flower Magazine editor-in-chief Margot Shaw
When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. May 18
Where: Houston Design Center, 7026 Old Katy Road
Tickets: $10-$100; eventbrite.com
It’s been a busy year for architecture, design and landscaping.
“Gardens are now tremendously important outdoor spaces. They are on our radar more now than they already were,” McAlpine said. “Also, people are more prone now to ask for at least one room with a door in it. They can’t do a Zoom or phone call without going out to their car. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that myself, and I don’t even have children. I’m in my car right now because my housekeepers are in my house vacuuming.”
McAlpine, who is based in Atlanta, likened the busy architecture and design world to a similar era of creativity a century ago.
“I think we are back to where we were 100 years ago. The 2020s are the new Roaring ’20s,” he said. “Look at America. When were the wonderful buildings almost uniformly, across the board, built? So many were built in the 1920s specifically. We’re in a realm of great design, music, film and creativity.”
Our need to be home so much more the past year has driven the focus on remodeling and refurnishing, but also, McAlpine said, because our homes are one thing we can control in a time of great upheaval.
And what clients are asking for is getting more interesting, both Booth and McAlpine said. Dreams of rooms that look like 1,000 others on social media are out. Unique interior spaces are in.
“People are tired of looking so much like every other place they go and everything they see,” McAlpine said. “Antiques and eclecticism allow a real, very important signature on an interior, and I think having imperfect possessions is a great signal that we are not perfect, and our capacity to love imperfect people has a lot to do with our love of antiques.”
More contemporary and modern design are on the rise, and McAlpine said antiques still fit well into those interiors.
Booth, who is based in Nashville, Tenn., specializes in building homes that have character. He said he and his colleagues across the country are busier than they could have ever imagined despite a volatile economy.
“Everybody is more focused on home now than they’ve ever been in my entire career of more than 30 years. All of a sudden, everybody wants something done,” he said. “Truthfully, in our practice, I have never been quite as busy as we are at this stage, which is very unusual in any crisis. Typically, that’s when work falls off. We’re focused on home as the real vehicle to have creative change in your life.”
Clients are looking for more authenticity, energy efficiency and sustainability in materials they choose, the designers agreed.
“I think it is embedded in most of our mindsets,” McAlpine said. “I don’t approach it as a moral issue, although I suppose it is. I approach it from the word ‘sustainable.’ Things of a very high quality are the things that last and don’t tend to get replaced over and over again.”
“The waste is when you are redoing and refinishing and redoing anything,” he continued. “An investment in quality is on everyone’s radar, certainly when it comes to energy in houses. My approach is beyond my relationship with my client; it is that we are building houses that are inheritable. There are houses in the past that are such monsters that there aren’t many future stewards for them. The big mansions are so energy consuming that nobody really wants to deal with them, and so they have a terrible future in terms of the next 100 years.”
Booth noted that geothermal heating and cooling systems are popular with clients, as are paints and fabrics with less off-gassing.
“There’s an environmental reason to use those materials, but it’s also about authenticity. There’s something to a piece of lumber with history,” Booth said. “It has that character that expresses its past and brings it to a new build or new construction.”