The Interior Design Reference & Specification Book

Job:02-30056 Title: RP-Interior Design Reference and Specification

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Deborah Berke, could you describe yourself and your practice?

I’ve been practicing architecture for more than twenty years. The practice has grown

from being a desk in the middle of my studio apartment to a thirty-five-person office

that provides services that include master planning, urban design, traditional archi-

tecture as it’s understood, interior design, and actually even decorating; we offer a

full range of services. Some of our clients elect to take only one and others elect to

take advantage of more.

Who were your mentors in teaching you about design?

Judith Wolin, who was my teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design, was my

literal, most direct mentor. I was at RISD in the 1970s—it was very much an artsy

environment. What Judy made appreciable to me was the idea that your work was

good if you brought an intelligence to it, and if you brought to it the idea of revisiting

and editing and reconsidering; in other words, a rigorous form of self-critique.

I then taught at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. Spending five

years in the company of Peter Eisenman, Anthony Vidler, Kenneth Frampton, Mario

Gandelsonas and Julia Bloomfield—in an environment that valued intelligence and

inquiry—was the next chapter of mentoring. After that, I took a radical departure

from that kind of straightforward education and it became about taking what I had

learned in that environment and applying it to the things that I have always intuitively

cared about, which is the found and not the consciously created. Now I would rather

wander the back part of the city to discover the decrepit oddities. I’m taking the

word “mentoring” and morphing it into inspiration.

At what point in your life did you feel confident about starting your own company?

When I got out of school there wasn’t any work for architects, so my first job was in

the graphic design department of an enormous multinational engineering firm that

had its headquarters in New York. This job was not intellectually challenging, and

I started hanging out at the IAUS, taking courses. Eventually, I got a job as admin-

istrator of the educational programs under Mario Gandelsonas and then became

a teacher there. Augmenting that salary, I taught in two elementary schools; the

NEA in those days put artists and architects into public schools—they paid $100 a

day, which was a lofty sum. The courage to open my own practice came less from a

sense that I finally have a job and I can open the doors, than I finally have enough

other kinds of jobs. I can print up some business cards, put a straightedge on my

coffee table, and say that I’m in practice. That’s how it worked for me.

PERSPECTIVES ON FUNDAMENTALS:

DEBORAH BERKE

I think it’s very cyclical, to the extent of depending on the coincidence of when you are ready in

terms of confidence, experience, and opportunity, and when the natural cycles of the economy

give you the sense that you can sustain it—that doing the garage addition for your cousin’s

next-door neighbor is not going to be your one and only chance to design something, that

there will be a job after that. When those two things are in sync, then you are ready.

What phase of a design project do you find to be the most satisfying? The most educational?

The most challenging?

I love the very, very beginning. I love seeing the site for the first time, whatever the site might

be. I love talking to people in the very beginning and I love schematic design. I love study

models. I like sketching. I like thinking. I like falling asleep with forms in my head as I doze off.

I find the well-executed detail or the exquisite piecing together of a large set of documents

interesting, but it’s not my thing. There are terrific people in my office who do that well, and I

can work with them to make sure that I feel there is the kind of wholeness and integrity to the

project that I want it to have. But I do that more as a critic, whereas in the early stages of the

project, I’m the creator. Is it the most educational? Yes, in that it’s the most challenging and

forces me to think.

What is your approach for starting a project?

I don’t arrive at a project with a preconceived notion. I try to educate my clients about the fact

that they should have no preconceived notions either. If somebody comes to you and they

want a house, there’s clearly going to be some place where food is stored and prepared and

some place where people are going to sleep, but beyond that there are many notions you dis-

pense with when you begin to examine the program and the forms that people automatically

associate with the program.

I think that, for me, all design processes are reiterative processes, and for how I work, the

client needs to participate in that process. I’m not the kind of designer who says, “Here it is,

take it or leave it.” What I become in the reiterative process is a salesman, to ensure that

the result I see is the result I can get them to agree to. There’s the candid truth: At a certain

point, you get the client to embrace the idea and form as enthusiastically as you are embrac-

ing it.

What is the role of technology in your practice? Is it a tool for design, or does software allow for

a more creative exploration of the design process?

One of my partners lives in Reykjavik, Iceland. He spends one week of each month in New

York, and the rest of the time he’s on our server from his office there. That has proven to be

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THE INTERIOR DESIGN REFERENCE + SPECIFICATION BOOK

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Job:02-30056 Title: RP-Interior Design Reference and Specification

#175 Dtp:216 Page:70

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