View Slideshow
For more than three decades, Shelton, Mindel & Associates has applied a passionately rigorous, nuanced approach to a diverse range of high-profile architecture and interior design projects, among them Trudie Styler and Sting’s London home and Ralph Lauren’s New York headquarters. Founded by Lee F. Mindel and Peter Shelton, who died in August, the firm is modernist but respectful of the past, conducting research on each space and client as a starting point. Exacting curatorial attention is given not only to architecture and design details but also to furnishings—pieces by Alvar Aalto, Poul Kjærholm, and Charlotte Perriand are favorites. With the first comprehensive monograph on Shelton, Mindel’s award-winning work coming out from Rizzoli in April, Mindel sat down for a conversation with AD.
Architectural Digest: In the new book, critic Joseph Giovannini writes, “Shelton, Mindel is most remarkable for its success with delight.” He also calls your work compassionate. Do you agree?
Lee F. Mindel: I believe that you can create a space that produces an experience of joy. Seamless integration of the interior elements—light, acoustics, texture, color—makes the space pleasurable. It’s a static dead end if the space is completely resolved. As an architect, you want to bring light, opportunity, and the unexpected. You can regift a space to a client.
AD: How did assembling the book affect your thinking about your practice?
LFM: When I first looked at the photographs of our work in the finished book, I didn’t know how it all happened. My second thought was that we have so much more to do. Yes, possibly with an eye to a legacy, I wrote every caption with a brief and a solution. Usually this type of book is destined for the coffee table, but we wanted it to be a window into our process. I hope readers use it as a research tool and will ask more of their own spaces. The book also enshrines Peter Shelton’s enormous contributions.
AD: You’ve long admired Scandinavian design and even curated an auction on the subject at Phillips de Pury. How does this dovetail with your work?
LFM: My passion for Nordic design developed with an awareness of the region’s great architects. Collecting their designs allows us to explore our architectural DNA. Arne Jacobsen and Alvar Aalto share a humanity, a sense of nature, and rigor of space. Take Aalto’s 1933 Paimio tuberculosis sanatorium in Finland: The building’s shallow depth permits maximum daylight—it’s an inspiring use of light.
AD: One of the hallmarks of your work is a multidirectional plan. How does it enhance the experience of a space?
LFM: The pleasure of a space is almost symphonic. Each element contributes to the whole. Right now we’re working on a Long Island property that offers a variety of experiences—a spiral of living. The main rooms are organized on different levels, linked by stairs. There’s no best view. An exterior staircase goes from ground to roof. A boardwalk deck goes straight through the house uninterrupted.
AD: Your firm is recognized for high-end residential work. You must have a finely honed sense of collaboration.
LFM: I’ve learned from every client. Sharing the building process with a client is intimate, and humbling. Having the time and ability to share is rare. You’re not the client’s friend, but you get to know them in a profound way. You seek to understand what their potential is. You meet at the table and surrender. It is the architect’s job to understand what’s important for the client. That’s your oxygen. If you cannot understand them, you’re doing something wrong. And we talk to the client’s kids. We deliver an intimate product and apply this same methodology to residential and corporate design. That’s why we don’t take on a huge number of jobs. It’s like couture.
AD: What’s next?
LFM: One of our latest projects is the Marquand, a luxury residential building in New York that opens this spring. We updated its prewar upstairs-downstairs plan while preserving its volume and grandeur. We did full-sweep branding, everything from furniture to soap dishes, and we used great cabinetmakers, upholsterers, masters of things. Beyond that, we’ve got private projects under way here in the U.S. and in Europe, and we’re working on product design for various commercial clients, including Knoll, Nessen, Waterworks, and V’Soske. We’re also curating an architecture auction at Phillips in 2013, and a second auction, focusing on the designer as artist, is scheduled for 2014.
Click here to view the slide show of refined spaces designed by Shelton, Mindel & Assoc.
