George Cameron Nash: “Tabula rasa. A Latin word meaning to scrape the tablet—having no context. I wish to start the year with a clean slate. No preconceived ideas, just simplify and edit in a broad sense. Color, lines, shapes, and form—nothing too bold, nothing too ancient.”
Joseph Minton has no resolution, but he does have a 4-year-old Doberman named “Resolution,” born on New Year’s Day, 2002. He goes by Rez for short.
Abby Smith, principal, Quorum Design + Construct: “I want to learn more about green building and incorporate environmentally sound energy solutions into our home building.”
Robyn Menter of Robyn Menter Design Associates Inc.—”I want to make a conscious effort to improve the environment by using ecologically diverse solutions and materials that conserve natural resources.”
Richard Trimble of Richard Trimble and Associates Inc.: “My resolution is to explore the best ways to achieve pure classic design while keeping it simple, elegant, understated.”
Trisha Wilson of Wilson Associates: “I resolve to design more time into my schedule to enjoy the things that mean the most to me: true friends, memorable experiences, lots of laughter. I also resolve to raise enough funds for The Wilson Foundation.”
Sherry Hayslip of Hayslip and Associates: “Clean lines, pure living, and fabulous design to take our city to greater aesthetic heights.”
Bryan Long of Bryan Long Designs: “Design for the future, not for yesterday. As I’m getting ready to turn 45, I’ll make moisturizer my best friend. One more: I’ll pick up every penny I see on the ground.”
Putting on the Ritz
While visitors may be the last thing you want to hear about post-holiday, guests and their utmost desires are on the mind of top hoteliers and their interior designers 24/7. Guests’ wishes are the designers’ command when it comes to the most luxurious rooms in Dallas, set to open this summer.
“Our guests don’t like clutter,” says Roberto van Geenen, general manager of The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas. And they like automatic coffeemakers in their rooms, as Dutch-born van Geenen learned through extensive focus groups. The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas’ interior designer, Frank Nicholson, created a mahogany wood beverage station to hide the espresso machine and its accoutrements, plus beverages. Outside of the marble-floored, stone-countered bath, the new Ritz rooms will be decked out in coral and gold tones with flat screen televisions, those famous Ritz beds, gold brocade duvets, 600-thread count Frette linens, and linen mats for each side of the bed so tootsies never touch carpet.
Mother-In-Law Knows Best
Theresa Haddock’s most challenging job to date has been for her own daughter, Penny, who’s
married to Charles Gromatzky of Gromatzky Dupree & Associates, architects for the Stoneleigh high-rise. When Penny and Charles moved into the penthouse at 3701 Turtle Creek Blvd., Charles made it clear: “I don’t want our home looking like my mother-in-law decorated it.”
“It doesn’t,” says Haddock, standing in her daughter’s Bulthaup kitchen.
A designer since 1971, Haddock has seen the city grow like wildfire. Her favorite haunts: Brendan
Bass for her signature Chapman hurricane lamps, Allan Knight, Mews II, Debris, White Elephant, Parkhouse Antiques, and Robert Allen. All of which appeal to her design-conscious son-in-law.
The Faux Beau
When Michael Graves made an appointment to see designer Trisha Wilson’s door in the early 1980s, he was just an artist selling his abstract paintings on Belt Line Road. But when he walked into her office, Wilson had four people waiting to meet with him. I have arrived, Graves thought. Turns out, Wilson thought he was Michael Graves the architect.
But today, Graves the faux finisher is known in Dallas everywhere among the design and architecture set. He has spent the last 20 years jazzing the walls of the city’s most elite homes and worked miracles on commercial walls, including 80,000 square feet of finish for Millennium Jaguar. Then there’s Smirnoff Music Centre, Platinum Club at American Airlines Center, and Hotel Palomar, Dallas.
And just try telling Graves that faux finishing is on the design hit list for 2007. “If you think faux finishing is trendy,” says Graves, whose classmates paid him a quarter to illustrate their folders in fifth grade, “you don’t understand it. A thousand years ago the Carthaginians painted stucco to emulate marble. Today, we have the advantage of better materials.”
SWEET SPA TREATS
Undress at the grocery store? Anew 52,000-square-foot Preston/Forest Whole Foods which opened last month features the area’s first Whole Foods Spa, overseen by newly recruited Lake Austin spa director Sherrie Huebner. In-house interior designer Heather Hajdu married the store’s design into the 4,500-square-foot spa with a natural, clean feel, monochromatic layered creams, and splashes of blue, including two soothing water walls in the spa lobby that, when combined with architectural elements and engineered acoustics, will keep the treatment area pristinely quiet. In other words, you won’t hear “price check” on the loudspeaker while the masseuse is kneading your neck.
