Jamie Bush + Co
Jamie Bush, principal and founder of Jamie Bush + Co, talks about interior architecture and design.
This interview is part of The Second Studio Podcast hosted by FAME Architecture & Design.
One Manhattan Square in New York, NY - Photography ©StephenKentJohnson
This week David and Marina are joined by interior architect and designer Jamie Bush, Principal and Founder of Jamie Bush + CO. to discuss growing up with designers, photographers, and artists; studying Architecture abroad in Venice; transitioning into interior architecture; the disconnect between architects and interior designers; differentiating between interior design and architecture; fee structures; and more. Enjoy!
DL: You are based in LA but originally from the East Coast??
JB: I grew up on Long Island, all my family's still back there. I grew up in an interesting family, half sort of Jewish farmers, dairy farmers, and then the other half were Irish Catholic millworkers. We came from a working-class, fairly modest means, my extended family really worked their way up into different professions besides farming.
The proximity to Manhattan was a driving force, and like a lot of immigrant families, the first generation tries to boost the second generation. This generation of farmers that worked nonstop gave a platform for my grandparents and great uncles and aunts to dream a little bit, rather than working on the farm. They all ended up having careers in Manhattan and in the arts, and like a lot of New York Jews, they were intellectuals that were in the arts and designs.
MB: Were there many farms back then on Long Island?
JB: Long Island used to be a tremendous amount of farms. Potato farms were big, there were vegetable farms and a lot of dairy farms. If you look back at the history of the Hamptons, one of the reasons why the Hamptons were such a draw for so many people is that it was very bucolic. We think of the Hamptons now as charming country life but fairly built up. For years they were just farms and sort of stately country homes of the wealthy. We actually had a hundred-acre dairy farm in East Hampton, I used to run around the cow fields.
DL: Why didn't you go into farming?
JB: We farmed as kids, but we were really surrounded by artistic people. Everybody made things in the family, even if they weren't professional artists. So my dad made sculptures, my mom designed tables, my sister painted, I had aunts that would paint, and my grandmother made pottery. It’s funny, you know, you grew up in a family of policemen and that's what you know.
I was always influenced by the natural world, organic beauty, and being close to the earth. I think my true interest lay in the arts and that's really something that just felt natural. I also was encouraged, just like a lot of other people, but because I had family members who were in the arts and that made a living, it wasn't superfluous.
MB: Would you go to the city as a kid often?
JB: We lived about an hour outside the city, but a lot of my relatives lived in the city. One aunt was a model, and another was a shoe designer and had a very high-end shoe company in Manhattan that was like the Manolo Blahnik of the day. I had cousins that were painters and an uncle that was a photographer. They were all in the city. As I got older I would just take a train, believe it or not. What's interesting about Long Island is that people take trains unlike the less the rest of the country! So as a teenager, you could just hop on a train and go right into Penn Station and go see a show or see a museum. It was very easy and not threatening. Then eventually I lived in the city for a while during college as well.
DL: We had lived in New York for a period of time, but I'm from California, and Marina's from France, so the first time I went to New York it was extraordinary. “Wow, this is what I've been waiting for in the city”. You eventually decide to study art and architecture. When did that become a formal decision? How did you decide to go to Tulane?
JB: As a teenager, I wasn't like extraordinarily brilliant, but I did well. I had a motivating factor because I was closeted as a kid, and I needed to get away. I applied to a lot of colleges and visited all these places mostly in the northeast. I didn't get in everywhere, but the places I got in, I got out a map, and then I took a ruler and I measured the farthest distance from my house, and that was Tulane. New Orleans sounded cool. I thought I'd be swimming in the Mississippi every day, just have no clue what the school was. So I went there as a liberal arts student. I took painting classes and I thought I would be a painter or some type of artist, I did glass blowing and figure drawing and all of that.
In my first year of school, I started hanging out with some kids at the architecture school and I became friends with them. Looking back, my mother knew I was good at math and I was interested in art and design, so she suggested architecture and I was like, “Ugh, it's a terrible idea. What are you talking about?”. When I went to school, it just clicked. It was an extraordinary experience for me because New Orleans has such a rich history of architecture and romance, it's the most romantic place and super decadent. I drove in deep and I transferred. I ended up doing a five-year program there and getting my master's and now I'm actually on the architectural board guiding the university
Canyon House in Mandeville, CA - Photography ©JoeFletcher
MB: You studied in Italy too, was that during that time?
JB: I took a half year abroad. I lived in Venice for about five or six months. That was through the university, but that was brilliant because we basically just had apartments in Venice and the city was our classroom. We would take weekend trips throughout the Venetto. We would not only study all of the classical architects, but then we would look at Carlo Scarpa. We would go to all the Scarpa buildings throughout the Venetto. It was just such an extraordinary experience not to be tied to a classroom.
MB: Did you ever think of moving back there after you were done with school?
JB: No. You know, Italy is by far my favorite European country, but it's so ass backward as far as being able to get anything done. To send a package, might take four months. Milan, which is actually a really functioning contemporary city and I love it to death and I don't want it to change forever, and it seems like I would have a lovely life there, but I would sort of achieve nothing that I would really set myself up to do.
DL: At what point did you decide to come to California?
JB: So a couple of reasons. I worked in New York during college, I had some internships and I worked for some architecture firms. I got a taste for living in the city. After I graduated, I was always interested in modernist architecture but in residential, we studied the early modernists like Neutra, Schindler, and Lautner and the European architects that came here to sort of make their way. California always had sort of a new way of living, and so that always enamored me.
I moved out with a college friend, and we literally moved the week before the Northridge earthquake. I had no furniture. We rented this charming old Spanish little bungalow in a complex and the whole place had plaster dropping everywhere, doors racking, and freaking out like everybody else. The whole city was just a disaster. Then we lived in Silver Lake, at the time mid-century modern homes were starting to be really considered something, but not really. I really dove deep into the art scene here, all my friends were artists. This was back when Silver Lake was still like leather daddies and rough bars. I didn't realize how much creativity and freedom LA afforded me and also a place of reinvention. As sort of ugly and disorienting as LA can be, I still find it such a thrilling place of creativity and experimentation.
LA is not for everybody, but I prefer the more thrilling adventure. We've been so fortunate because we get to experiment and do things that we've never done before, might not have any business doing but we're allowed to sort of try and experiment. We're working on a house right now that's a 1930s English Tudor that is completely out of our normal genre. It's all William Morris wall coverings, fabrics, and English arts and crafts, which I'm completely interested in but because it's out of our lane a lot of times, people wouldn't take the risk to let us sort of dabble in that.
DL: How did you end up pivoting in a way from architecture to interior design? From our perspective, and let us know if you agree, there's a pretty big divide between interior design and architecture from the public's perception and within the professions.
JB: It's true. It's hard to generalize sometimes because you may find an architect in Manhattan who mostly deals with interior architecture that really then morphs into interior design. You could find a firm that's very adept at all of it, or you could find a firm that is in the Pacific Northwest, who really likes building and doesn't really dabble in any of that. It's always a gray area. I love the discipline of architecture, the education was extraordinary. The interesting thing that I realized after leaving school and working is that the history of architecture is not this sort of myopic-focused endeavor that's just looking at styles and things like that.
I worked for different architecture firms in Manhattan and in Los Angeles. Then ended up starting my own firm with two friends from there. A couple of years into it, we were working in garages and building stuff ourselves, and did everything wrong, didn't know how to run a business but we survived and I realized I was not going to be a great architect. I just didn't have the chops for it. During that time, I was really enamored with the vintage stores in Los Angeles mid-century modern, and became sort of a picker, meaning I would go to flea markets and find things that seemed interesting. I became friends with a lot of the dealers and I'd buy a chair and sell it for 10 bucks more than what I paid for.
When I had my firm with my two partners I got an opportunity to do the interiors of a home for an alumni of a famous architect. He didn't know what he was doing. He built this beautiful home for his parents but didn't really know what to do about the interiors, so I just made it up. I did the interiors and figured it out. I had the foresight to save up some money and hire the photographer, Tim Street-Porter, to photograph it. By hiring him, it got into the LA Times, and not because of me, it's because of his name! Then it got in some books and got a lot of press and that sort of sparks the beginning of all of this.
River Oaks in Houston, TX - Photography ©RogerDavies
DL: How did you develop your knowledge or expertise in your design? Was it just project by project as you were going? Did your architecture education translate over to interior design decisions?
JB: I feel so fortunate that I came into the industry through architecture because, besides feeling like an overqualified decorator, especially in Los Angeles, our office has the ability to do 50% interior design and 50% interior architecture. Most of our projects were heavily involved with architecture. I never really left architecture. Once in a while, we are the architects of a project. We’re working on a Pierre Koening mid-century paper fold house in Palos Verdes estates right now, where it's a smaller house and we are the architects on the project. We're trying to restore the whole thing and being the lead of the project, bringing in the landscape architects and the contractors, and creating a team.
After I did that project that Tim Street-Porter photographed, I realized I didn't know enough. I really wanted to work for somebody to sort of understand the business, and the industry better. I ended up working for Kelly Wearstler. I befriended her through a friend. I met Kelly at the birthday party of her client. I wrapped her gift in wallpaper, sort of purple. Kelly was there and unwrapping it. She smelled the wallpaper glue. She said, “Is that wallpaper?”. And then we started hitting it off. I ended up working for her only for a year, which I always regret because I wanted to stay longer to learn more but I ended up buying a house that we had to redo.
“We really are envisioning an entire sensibility and aesthetic for a project, really looking at the long term...”
We really look at the architecture first, what it's asking for, what it needs, and what it doesn't need. Every project's different. Every client's different. We have a few repeat clients that we've done maybe multiple houses for. You gain their trust and they see the value of what we can bring to a project and they really allow us to drive it because we're not decorating. We really are envisioning an entire sensibility and aesthetic for a project, really looking at the long term, how they wanna live and grow old in this house or not. It might be something that's a five-year plan or something that they want their grandkids to inherit. We just completed two projects that were five-year projects. These are like long-term commitments with people that they've entrusted us, which has been amazing, but much more complicated, bigger endeavors than we've done sort of in the past.
DL: The bigger questions that you were talking about, seem to be right up the architect's alley. That's what architects would like. If you're doing a ground-up home for somebody, you would ask these kinds of questions. My sense is that there's architecture into your design, and then furnishing, and that's the layers of the project in that order.
JB: We've grown as a firm, we have the ability to take on some larger things. For years we did smaller stuff. Right now we're doing some very small projects that are like jewel boxes alongside 20,000 square foot homes because it's more interesting and I don't wanna start just doing everything that's overscaled. Some things make money, and some things lose money but for us, we are a full-service design studio. Don't get me wrong, we're not an architecture firm! We are an interior design firm with a heavy hand in interior architecture, but more and more we do everything.
For a lot of our clients, we do turnkey to the point where we select toilet scrubbers and literally toothbrushes, hangers, and vacuum cleaners, where there's nothing left sort of unresolved. We're finishing a job up in Atherton right now where we were doing sew kits, literally the things that are in the laundry room for the housekeeper. Not every project's like that, but for a lot of our clients now, especially for second or third homes, it doesn't mean it's more expensive necessarily, it's just thoughtfully selected and we're control freaks! We're doing this one house that's white on white, on cream, on white but you can't leave it for the chance that the dustpan is red plastic. It is a slippery slope because then where do you stop?
It's fun because they let us dive deep and really get into the details to such an extent, this isn't just objects, it's also with the interior architecture as well. Everything is considered. A lot of our projects now we're doing all custom hardware, like the entire house. We design every single piece of hardware and have it cast and milled. So it's special, but it also sort of is this consistent thread that runs through the entire project.
DL: You're totally right that clients are all different and you just don't know. Sometimes even if you do your research and you're meeting with them before you get into the project you still don't know how things are gonna go until three months in, six months in. How do you plan for the fees? Because if you have the same fee structure, and you apply that to everyone, sometimes it's gonna be very profitable because things move quicker or they're easier to work with, and other times it's the exact opposite. So How does that work in this kind of business?
JB: We've learned by trial and error over time, and what we've come up with a sort of reward system for quick decision-making. The way that we work in interior architecture is all hourly. The reason being is that we work on some jobs say with a named architect that has a very clear aesthetic, we might advise on material selections, plumbing fixtures, and work on the lighting plan, things like that but we're not really driving the interior architecture. So our time is more limited and it's really up to the client how much or how little involved they want us to be with that. It's sort of a la carte. If they want us to design this bar, we design the bar, if they want us to get involved with everything we get involved with everything. Sometimes we consult on everything, on the landscape and all of it, and we have other clients that want us just to sort of dip our toe in. The client has control over how much time and hence money they spend on our services.
Then with the interior design portion, we charge hourly up until an item is selected. The idea is that there's a lot of conversation before any time is spent, but we have some clients that want three choices for every single thing in the house, and they'll make a choice out of one of those three. Then there's a markup on top of the purchase price. The markup covers the cost of paying for things, procuring things, organizing, fabrication, shipping delivery, overseeing construction of things, returning things that are wrong, and all of the sort of back-of-house time spent. But then the opposite, if they wanna fly to Paris and they wanna shop for, dining chairs for three days, we charge hourly for that. Say a dining chair that we show a client one out of three, and they pick it, and it takes an hour of time versus three days worth of time. It really is up to the client, what's important and what's not important, and what they want to spend money on. Once a client really understands that they value and respect our time because they're paying for it, they also get what they want from the experience as well.
We talk to clients about this all the time and it's not just about the end result, it's not just about how the house turns out and what it looks like at the end. It's about their experience as well. Do they want to be involved, and do they enjoy the process? Do they want to fly to Paris for three days to look for dining chairs? Is that something that's important to them? Do they want an experience in the process or do they just want it done? It really is a big question because again, with all of these projects that are really long-term projects, they have the ability to choose what their experience is going to be, and more often than not, it sort of awakens them that this can be an amazing and a learning experience if they're open to it.
Our best projects are like, nobody knows what the end result's gonna be at the beginning. It's really about discovery and education for them, but also for us. Those are the most gratifying projects I feel like, where we have no idea where this thing's gonna really land. We come up with something that's not just great looking, but it's memorable.
Seaside Loft in Venice, CA - Photography ©RogerDavies
DL: For clients who have never worked with an interior designer or decorator for the selection of furniture and objects, the typical percentages for the procurement portion are quite high compared to what an architect might charge for their work if it’s based on a percentage of the cost of construction. Do you have to have to explain there's a lot that goes into what you do?
JB: No, we've been fortunate because most of our clients understand the value of their own time. When at times they try to do it themselves, and things go wrong, they realize what it takes: the understanding of the logistics, the number of steps that have to go into shipping, making sure nothing's broken in the process, refinishing the frames, reupholstering, etc. Getting the metal replated, there may be six or seven different people involved with the restoration of these chairs over the process. It's a super complicated layered process with any number of things that go wrong every day.
MB: Do you guys come up with some sort of typical process?
JB: Most of our projects, we do get hired early on in the process. We have a process document that we share with our clients at the beginning, to show them our process and we try to tailor it to the client. As you can imagine, we have some clients in Europe, so we don't get to see them much. We have to present in a different way than we would present somebody that comes into the office. A lot of clients can't read plans very, so they need 3D renderings. At first, try to get to know them, and how they want to be presented to.
“We always look at the architecture first, understanding the language of the architecture and the aesthetics of the client”
We always look at the architecture first, understanding the language of the architecture and the aesthetics of the client. We try to get to know the clients, how they live now, what they surround themselves with, what they like, and almost more importantly what they don't like. We try to get to know them because they might be stuck in a rut and they wanna branch out.
Then we immediately, especially with new construction, look at the architectural plans. If we're lucky enough to be involved before construction, we do furniture floor plans immediately based on input from the client. We've had some unfortunate experiences in the past where we were brought on too late. We worked on a job in Venice a while ago, a big house, we were brought in late and there were no floor outlets in the living room and all the walls were glass, so the furniture had to be floated in the space. There couldn't be lamps in the middle of the room. There was no place to put a sofa. This big space was all circulation. The actual functioning of the space, not just the aesthetics, but the functioning of space didn't work because we weren't studying these things, we weren't brought on early.
DL: That perplexes me. I don't know how an architect would produce in that case a house and not really seriously considered the furniture layout, and therefore not consider the client's needs in terms of the furniture.
JB: A lot of times, you know, we work with really good architects and they put in some basic layouts that make sense, and clients are quirky too. The architects may be doing the default of what makes sense and it could totally work, but it might not work for those clients. We go through a whole process, some clients come to the table with a budget that we have to work backward, and other times they have no idea. So we do estimates, and we talk about money immediately. So we really understand and they understand what they can and can't get. When we do these budgets, we include everything. We include shipping, delivery, installation, scotch guarding, contingency, and taxes, so it's not just the cost of goods, but it's the entire picture padded. We also have some clients that don't want budgets, and this is sort of a new thing for us for the past several years, and these are more experienced clients, repeat clients, and the reason being is that they know themselves and they want what they want, but they also don't want this sort of constant back and forth.
One Manhattan Square in New York, NY - Photography ©StephenKentJohnson
DL: That's another aspect that maybe most people don't fully realize is how many decisions and items are purchased, made, or created. It's overwhelming for both architecture and interior design. For the architect with a ground-up building, the clients aren't necessarily involved in a lot of those decisions because they're hyper-technical and you boil it down to a few decisions. When it comes to that finer final layer that you see, and touch, they might be more involved in more of the decisions and it can very easily be overwhelming.
JB: We just finished a job in Holmby Hills, a major house for us that we worked on with William Heffner's office and this amazing landscape architect Raymond Jungles. A very designed house, if you can imagine the Brody house by Quincy Jones in Holmby Hills, you know antique brick, sort of mid-century regency, late forties, early fifties house that is almost bordering on garish. There are big French chandeliers and marble toilets. The previous owner passed away and these people moved in with contemporary furniture and art. The minutiae that we got involved with of gold-plated toilet handles, I just can't even begin to tell you the amount of detail and layering that went in. The number of purchase orders on that job, at one point, we had seven people in the office working on that one house, and that went on for three and a half years. It was like a huge endeavor. People get exhausted by the process, especially when they're involved. These clients were lovely but super involved. They loved the process, but at the end of it they're like, “Jesus, is it gonna end?”.
A lot of this job is really trying to understand where your clients are at and being their cheerleader and somebody that they can cry on your shoulder and really unload, especially with residential architecture, it's such a personal endeavor. I mean, you get to really know each other very, very well.
“This job is really trying to understand where your clients are at and being their cheerleader...”
We were doing a house recently in Mandeville Canyon, this big modern farmhouse and the client had some Biedermeier furniture, very beautiful sort of high polished, very yellow woods, with black detailing, it didn't make sense in the house, it's a completely different aesthetic. It has its own merit and a place, but not in this house. Even the proportions, this house was sort of enormous, and the scale of the furnishings was diminutive and refined. We considered it as it was important to her but I think they came to their own conclusion that it didn't work rather than us sort of telling them. You have to sort of meet them where they are, and in a delicate way try to sort of dissuade them if it doesn't work. Some people have things that actually work, but it's always a tricky dance between the two.
DL: What also happens in the process is that designers will spend a lot of time thinking about this particular thing, this room, this space, this furniture piece, but the client only has a one-hour meeting to see it. It’s thought to expect a client to get up to speed to where the designer’s mindset is at.
JB: Fortunately what we do takes time, not everything is an immediate decision and there's time to sort of languish and think about these things. I do feel like time is one of the benefits of this industry, it is a process. Sometimes it's great to get things done quickly and go with your instinct for some things. We don't repeat ourselves, especially recently, all these projects are so divergent and have different aesthetics, different location, and different types of architecture. We're constantly having to take time to really figure things out.
DL: I also think that when designers pressure clients to make decisions too quickly, it's hard. Even if the client likes an option, there's a 50/50 chance that they're gonna email you back a week later and say, “You know what? I'm not so sure.”
I was thinking the other day about the differences between architects and interior designers. I think a lot of architects frankly look down on a lot of the interior design work that you see published because it's so heavy in the decoration, the wallpapers, the furnishings, the objects. If you gave that interior design task to an architect, it would be much more minimal. These are generalizations, but what is your feeling about that?
JB: If you look at the history of residential architecture, there are so many architects who designed everything. They would design buildings, design flatware, and coffee cups. That's rare today where you really have these total designs. I'm always baffled that architects sometimes just focus on light, space, and materiality rather than the furnishings which can enhance the architecture.
“I’m always baffled that architects sometimes just focus on light, space, and materiality rather than the furnishings which can enhance the architecture.”
To be fair to architects too, it's a thankless industry sometimes when you get into the nitty-gritty of running a firm and dealing with whatever hillside ordinances, and zoning issues and you have to be such a generalist when you're an architect, a jack of all trades too, especially if you want to create something unusual. Typically architects don't make a ton of money and so there are a lot of risks involved. It's understandable to an extent that at some point they just have to stop. They have to cut their brain off. They're building this space and they can't sort of see beyond that at times.
There are other people, like Rem Koolhaas, or even people that are more minimalist, like Steven Holl that will design furniture or, will sort of design interiors even if they're minimal. They do have spatial qualities, maybe not like Frank Lloyd Wright. I feel also that on the contrary, a lot of interior designers might not know their history well and might not be as rigorous in their discipline and understanding of architecture.
If you're an architect, and you've labored over this project for three years and then all of a sudden somebody comes in and throws it on its head in an insensitive way, I get it. I think there's a history of that disconnect. The success that we've had is that we really understand architecture, I'm trained as an architect. Everybody in the office does construction documents specifications, can oversee construction, and knows how to build things. We come to the table sort of maybe, not in a level playing, but able to sit at the table and understand the limits of what they're doing, and can also speak the same language.
I personally wish that the interior design education in this country was more rigorous. If we had, let's say five-year degrees for interior design where you're really understanding interior architecture as well as interior design, and it's not a two-year degree that you get to get in and out quickly and get the basics. I think we wouldn't have as much of a divide. I have a guy in the office who's a brilliant interior designer who's from Australia. The education of interior design in Australia is much more rigorous. They know how to draw, detail, and build things as well as understand furniture, lighting, and all the other disciplines. I can't tell you the value that he brings to all the projects that he works on.
I think the profession as a whole would be elevated with that type of foundation. Not that everybody has to go to five years of college to get their chops but architects are held to a very high standard, a lot of it's because of life safety issues, you equate it to lawyers and doctors and all of these other professionals. I just feel like interior design has so much to offer people that I feel that if the education system was reviewed and looked at and taught in a much more rigorous fashion in this country, I think it would be more valued as well.
Silvertop House in Silver Lake, CA - Photography ©TimStreetPorter
DL: I've also seen plenty of times where architects will make less money than interior designers. That's not always the case obviously, but a lot of times it is the case, per hour. I've always wondered, why is that the case.? A lot of people think architects make good money.
JB: I've experienced both. I started getting my license and I just stopped but what I understand is that architects have always been a combination of art and science. They're always struggling and will put in extra effort and time for free to make it an artistic endeavor. That's not everybody, but when you're designing, typically these architects care about it much more than the client or anybody else, and in doing so, we're trained to do things for free.
There's an industry standard, maybe not right now because everybody's so busy, but historically you cut your fees to get the job. You work on a fixed fee, a percentage of the construction cost, or some allocated sum per square foot, regardless of how long it takes, regardless of curve balls are thrown into it. There's almost a scarcity of jobs and getting ahead and the way to make money is very limited. There are not a lot of different ways of getting fees for your work. I will say a lot of clients don't care that you know about the footing, the HVAC, and these things that they're not even going to see. They value the finishes and the interiors because they see it, it's tactile, and it's quantifiable to them versus some waterproofing detail on the roof. They get annoyed about that stuff cause they don't really see it.
I also think that with interior design, there are multiple ways that we can make money, you can actually make more money doing interior design. I don't think it's always right that the architect might make less, it's a weird disconnect, but from our office and the way that we operate, we do a lot of different things to make money. I might do a rug line where I get royalties for something, or I buy inventory of things that I like that we use in jobs or, on the side, I'll buy things and then sell them at auction, or there's hourly and then there's markup, and I sell paintings, things like that.
DL: So an hourly fee structure is a solution to having a project where the fee runs out because it's a fixed fee?
JB: It is. It doesn't always work. We have been fortunate now that we've been able to really hone down our fee schedule where it's across the board and everybody has the same fees. In the past, there were jobs that I really wanted.
“Part of our success as a firm is that we saw things through to the end even when things got rough.”
This all comes from the idea of working for free, which I don't promote as an industry standard. Part of our success as a firm is that we saw things through to the end even when things got rough. Whether there were delays in schedule, budget overruns, clients getting stressed out, or money running out. This doesn't always work but what we've done as an office is that we've kept our overhead fairly low. We’ve been able to finish some great projects, but losing money in the process doesn't always work. You know, you have to obviously balance having projects that bring money in, and then other ones that we care deeply about that we know would be beneficial long term for our office, where we ended up losing money.
We did this one project in Carmel, this sort of famous little mid-century house on the water that we loved. It was a complicated job. During the process, we uncovered a tremendous amount of structural issues. There were incredible costs of the construction that nobody anticipated it. It was a very laborious, stressful process for the clients. We encouraged a lot of the construction, we were the architects on the project, but we a lot of these materialities that we brought in, caused delays and cost overruns and all these things. At the end of the day, they were so frustrated that we stopped charging them because we felt we had a hand in their stress level, which we did. I felt uncomfortable charging the client for our time on top of everything else. To get the home over the finish line, we ended up stopping charging them for a while. The projects that did bring money in helped sort of supplement the losses that we had on that job. But all, in the end, you know, we got the job published in AD, the client's super happy and a repeat client now.
DL: The distinction between interior design versus interior architecture, these terms are really squishy and they're used very differently across these professions. What does that mean for you guys?
JB: The big picture that we sort of explain to clients is that if you take the house and you flip it upside out and shake it, everything that sort of falls out of the house is interior design. Everything that sort of stays within it is interior architecture, except decorative light fixtures, these are interior designs, drapery is interior design, built-in shades are interior architecture, and wallpaper is interior design. So that's the only difference essentially. The general rule of thumb is that interior architecture is things that we do not purchase, things that we specify, and the contractor purchases. Interior design is an essential thing that we purchase.
Canyon House in Mandeville, CA - Photography ©JoeFletcher
DL: Has there ever been a situation where hourly didn't work out? I found that one of the struggles with it generally, is that for some projects that end up being much more complicated or the scope grows, the number of cumulative hours just increases, and no one was really prepared for this huge amount of work.
JB: At the beginning of jobs, we do cost estimates based on what we anticipate. For some repeat clients, like we have one repeat client that we work with for years, we have done fixed fees on some portions of the job. It's because we know them, we know each other, we have a shorthand, and we know what to expect. So it was cleaner for them just to be doing that. We sort of knew how to gauge those fees because they're a known entity, you know, and we trust them. Commercial jobs are different as well. We do fix fees for portions of commercial jobs because there's not typically the emotional attachment, it's more based on budget and timeframe. The decision-making process is usually a lot easier and more expedited.
MB: So a fee structure based on, let's say percentage of construction for interior architecture isn't something that's really common or even existing for you guys?
JB: I know there are certain firms that actually do that. I feel that architects, charge a percentage of construction costs a lot of times, it varies so much with the scope that we get involved with. As you can imagine, every project's different. I find historically it's very difficult after you have an agreement to then go back and revisit it with the clients, especially when you're seducing them into doing something fantastic, but then it's gonna cost more. I just find that our work tends to lately be so varied with so many different types of projects and different locations, and the hourly was always a very even gauge of our time commitment.
DL: Once you have a practice long enough, you have all that data, which kind of informs the estimates. Is there ever been a time when maybe earlier in the practice the estimate ends up being off? I feel like designers get in a situation where when things become much more complicated and they put in more time and they feel bad charging the client.
JB: The answer is yes, that happens. Most clients really understand when costs are going up, and typically it's because there's more manpower needed to do what they're asking us to do. For example, we were working on a job where we had just a regular team working on it, a big important job for us. Then we got heavily involved with the artwork in the house, and the artwork was very specific, and very time-consuming, between searching for things, procuring things, framing doing mockups and storyboards. It was almost another job so we had two other people in our office just working on artwork for the house and wasn't full-time, but it was a considerable amount more effort because the scope grew.
We talk about money from day one, because nobody likes to talk about it. I don't like surprises and I think our clients don't either, so we're very upfront. We're open books, there are no hidden markups and costs of anything. If you're a first-time client, you've never worked with a designer before, you wanna buy a widget, and why is this widget more expensive than that widget? And why are you charging more than this person down the street? Our answer is always, ”It's this combination of art and science. The science of it is the nuts and bolts, but the art of it is that inexplicable art process that goes into all of this”. It's easier to hire a designer that has a certain look and does a certain sort of thing that applies to several different jobs. You know what you're getting in a way because they can gauge their time and costs much easier because they've done it 10 times or 20 times, it's what they do and it doesn't belittle the quality of what they're doing, it's just that's their lane.
“More and more we’re doing things that we’ve never done before”
With us we're sort of the opposite, where more and more we're doing things that we've never done before, so we have no idea, it's such a bad sales pitch! We're doing this like a 1930s English Tudor house, we're dealing with vendors we've never dealt with before. We're dealing with aesthetics that we haven't dealt with before. A lot of its research and I find it thrilling and interesting, but it's not economical because we haven't done that before, but I think what we bring to the project is a fresh eye on this. Our client didn't go to somebody who has this aesthetic in their pocket. They wanted to hire us because they knew the perspective that we would bring to it and our appreciation of history and design. But it is difficult to quantify why somebody should pay more for us than somebody else to do this. It’s that x-factor of that artistic intention that's brought to a project that certain clients value and others don't.
Lakeshore Residence in Tahoe, CA - Photography ©RogerDavies
DL: I think there's also natural selection that happens when we're talking about the pairing of client and designer. If you find the right pairing, you find the right pairing. If it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be. Is there a particular type of project or maybe even design style or aesthetic style that you guys have not done yet that you really want to do?
JB: I think of it more in the terms of not so much the design aesthetic thing. I want to do a sort of Vienna succession sort of type of project, like a Joseph Hoffman sort of deco-style home. What interests me is a completely different experience. We were up for a job recently in India that was in Calcutta. This crazy enormous residential complex, which we had to turn down. It was just overwhelming and the scale of it was more than what we could handle. But it was fascinating because I've been to India once, but I love to go back and do work there and get involved in a “genus loci”, the sense of place and aesthetic that makes for that specific location on the planet for those people in that architecture of that moment.
MB: Since you have this dual background of architect and interior designer, what advice would you give to architects who would wanna be doing more interior design and interior designers who would wanna do more interior architecture?
JB: For interior designers that wanna do more interior architecture, it depends on where you are in your career, but I feel that working in an architecture firm is the easiest way to dive headfirst into that. You may have to go back, and take classes, some architectural classes potentially. You really have to have a strong foundation in understanding architectural history to even start doing that.
For architects wanting to be more involved with interior design, I think it's sort of the same thing. There's a tremendous amount of very rigorous interior design firms that you look at people like Peter Marino that build but also decorate, they also pick out the napkins. This is not like the decor. It really is a very rigorous practice that I think is being open to what they do and understanding the discipline. It's difficult to do both, whether you’re an interior designer wanting to do architecture or vice versa to do both things well.
“There is a big divide between architecture and interior design, and I wish a lot of these design schools would offer both. I think both disciplines would benefit from it as well. ”
There is a big divide between architecture and interior design, and I wish a lot of these design schools would offer both. I think both disciplines would benefit from it as well.
Seaside Loft in Venice, CA - Photography ©RogerDavies
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Growing up in an eccentric family of dairy farmers on Long Island and a small clan of renowned designers, photographers and artists in Manhattan propelled Jamie to study art and architecture in New Orleans and in Venice, Italy with a strong focus on organic modernism and the natural world. After receiving his Masters of Architecture from Tulane University, Jamie headed west seeking to discover the unsung heroes of mid-century modern residential architecture in Los Angeles. After stints at Marmol Radziner and Kelly Wearstler, he founded his own interior architecture and design firm in 2002 and has since been fortunate enough to have worked on some of the most significant historical residential modernist homes in the US.
Recognized for his ability to blur the lines between architecture and interior design, his ethos has always been to approach the design of a space as one holistic vision. Admired for his relevant and keen understanding of architecture and design, his firm has collaborated with some of the most respected names in the business including Steven Ehrlich, Marmol Radziner, David Hertz, Walker Workshop, and Barbara Bestor just to name a few. Jamie’s designs have been featured in over 70 publications worldwide including Architectural Digest, Interior Design, Vogue, Elle Decor, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times as well as several coffee table books. In 2017 Jamie was appointed to the Tulane School of Architecture Board of Advisors and was most recently honored into the 2020 AD 100 top global architects and designers of the year, as well as Elle Decor’s A-List of top designers for 2020.
He splits his time between Los Angeles and his houseboat on Long Island close to his family.