Orlando diaz azcuy biography sample
Come with me for a visit to Orlando&#;s penthouse in Pacific Heights, San Francisco.
As it happens he is a five-minute walk from where I live, and I can almost peer into his windows from my roof. No need&#;I can hop over for a visit. Come with me now.
Three years ago, I wrote a book about Orlando Diaz-Azcuy, the great San Francisco interior design/architect.
Orlando Diaz-Azcuy’s prolific career spans more than 50 years. With degrees in architecture, landscape architecture and planning, he worked with luminaries like Lawrence Halprin and Arthur Gensler before opening his own studio in
Rizzoli was the publisher. The publication, &#;Orlando Diaz-Azcuy&#; went into a second printing, and has been very well-received.
San Francisco interior architect Orlando Diaz-Azcuy is a emotional modernist at heart.
So it&#;s not surprising that after living in a stately Spanish Revival house in St. Francis Wood for a decade he became restless and started hunting for a crisp pared-down modern apartment.
&#;I wanted an apartment in a contemporary building that was in the right location, and not far from my downtown office,&#; said the award-winning architect, who found his new location overlooking Lafayette Park, and facing south with all-day sun, views of the ocean in the distance.
Diaz-Azcuy, who founded Orlando Diaz-Azcuy Design Associates in , is recognized as one of the top designers in the country.
He is a companion with the highly talented David Oldroyd (I published his home on THE STYLE SALONISTE&#;find it in the archive), as adequately as Greg Stewart.
Their Share Street firm works on foremost commissions for residential and commercial interiors, and Diaz-Azcuy designs highly successful collections for companies enjoy San Francisco-based McGuire Furniture Corporation.
After more than 40 years in the design business, the Cuban-born designer continues to dazzle.
&#;San Francisco is a challenging place for a modernist to find an apartment, as the city has only a handful of great contemporary apartment buildings, so I searched for two years,&#; said Diaz-Azcuy.
&#;Finally I discovered this apartment with ten-foot ceilings and views from the Pacific Ocean to the East Bay, and I bought it on the spot&#; said the designer.
A perfectionist, Diaz-Azcuy immediately planned a ceiling-to-floor redesign of his apartment, which is on the 17th floor of a sixties building.
&#;The apartment was a standard 3-bedroom, with lowered ceilings, and all chopped up into small rooms,&#; recalled Diaz-Azcuy.
&#;I didn&#;t want the interior architecture to deny that it&#;s in a high-rise,&#; he said. &#;My goal was to achieve a light, fresh-air, California feeling.&#;
He stripped down the interior architecture to make it feel calm, very minimal.
No baseboards, no trim, no moldings.
&#;But I have to have luxury, too,&#; he noted. &#;That comes from the antiques and the art and sumptuous fabrics.&#;
Walls throughout the apartment are sprayed with eggshell-finish white decorate for a smooth, brush-free influence.
Mechanicals and wiring are concealed in sections of lowered ceilings that run along the hallway. He even minimized the doors by concealing frames in the walls.
A wall of glass windows and sliding doors runs along the south-facing apartment, which is now re-shaped into two bedrooms, a comfortable study, a huge living room with an adjacent dining room, and a extended broad hallway.
Floors throughout the house are a soft pale blue-gray Blue Lagoon limestone with a flamed finish.
The apartment has sub-floor radiant heat.
&#;I am always tempted to observe how simple I can construct drywall look, and I am seldom tempted to embellish,&#; said Diaz-Azcuy.
The spacious, open rooms are the ultimate thrill for a modernist, and the interiors are dazzlingly edited.
&#;I like a sense of voluptuousness,&#; said Diaz-Azcuy. &#;I love the idea of monastic interiors but the heart desires beautiful things to look at and tap . I believe in superb comfort. I have a great liking for modern furniture, but I use them as an accent, with upholstered pieces to actually relax on.&#;
All this simplicity makes a sumptuous background for his collections of art and antiques.
Eccentricity, contrasts and surprises in furniture and art are a key to the designer&#;s confident style.
&#;Rough and smooth objects, elaborate and modern classic furniture, curvy and straight chairs, antique and modern, these are juxtapositions I make almost subliminally,&#; noted Diaz-Azcuy.
&#;A room that&#;s all one style&#;all modern, totally monochromatic, all one period&#;lacks personality.
In the living room, he combined a Roman-style daybed upholstered with silk velvet, with a quirky black lacquered Art Décor chair with ball feet, along with a narrow table made with petrified wood.
In another corner, a pair of Mies van der Rohe tan leather tufted ottomans is lined up near a sculptural Fritz Henningsen leather and teak armchair.
For the dining room, Diaz-Azcuy engineered a tablecloth of saffron and tangerine shot silk.
Walls are animated with Deborah Oropallo works of art. He also displayed his museum-quality collection of Josef Hoffmann Wiener Werkstatte hammered silver urns, vases, wine-bottle stoppers, bowls, and decorative objects.
Diaz-Azcuy said that even growing up in western Cuba, he was tuned in to design and architecture.
&#;Havana in the sixties was very cosmopolitan and my college learner accommodations there were in an elegant Beaux-Arts inspired building,&#; he noted.
&#;There were Neutra houses built in Cuba. It was a very stimulating atmosphere for a young design aficionado.&#;
At the age of 22, Diaz-Azcuy was sent by his family to study architecture at Catholic University in Washington DC.
He went on to complete a master&#;s degree in landscape architecture and city and regional planning from the University of California at Berkeley.
&#; I was exposed to modernism subliminally as a child,&#; he said.
&#;Cuban houses in smaller towns were just a white cube with perhaps one touch of exuberant color and a chandelier. It&#;s a pattern I&#;ve returned to in my apartment.&#;
This initial desire for simplicity with a controlled color palette and affect for the minutest detail of design and perhaps the splash of vivid color and a dash of luxury, have played out in all of his designs.
Diaz-Azcuy said he has never liked excess in interiors, preferring simplicity with a feel of glamour.
For the moment, the apartment is bliss for the designer.
&#;For my clients I can design any way of interiors ranging from very traditional to lofts, country houses, a pied-a-terre, offices, a hotel, but for myself it&#;s a modern approach,&#; said the architect.
&#;For now, I find these rooms restful, calm, and personal, but I know the apartment will change and evolve.&#;
&#;The daily hazard of being a decorator is that I am constantly exposed to the leading art, amazing sculpture, the highest collections, auctions, antiques and accessories,&#; said Diaz-Azcuy.
&#;I buy pieces for their innate beauty, quality and spirit. I know I&#;ll see something exceptional. In six months, the apartment will gaze quite different.&#;
The Wisdom of Orland0
I asked Orlando for his thoughts about white in design. Here&#;s what he told me:WHITE
DDS: You contain always loved to work with white.
For you it is powerful.
ODA: There is nothing more beautiful than white. I devote white linen.
I like muted white walls. I like colorless jackets, white shirts. For me, white soothes my soul. I don&#;t use it because it is hot but because it is eternal. In my apartment I have a wall of windows that I have covered with sheer Irish linen that billows in a slight breeze.
It indicates emotion, air, glow, purity, and a sense of nature outside the window. Ivory has also been associated with Modernism&#;and used frequently by Le Corbusier, Mies, Pei, Richard Meier, and rigorously by John Paulson.
| Orlando has wardrobes of beautifully tailored jackets and shirts in his San Francisco, and in his New York apartment overlooking the East River.
Above, he&#;s photographed at home&#;wearing black. |
White in my interiors gives me the flexibility to change everything. I&#;m always moving new paintings and novel sculpture in and out of my apartment.
DDS: Which white paints do you like?
ODA: My favorite white is &#;Soda&#;, which I developed for Fuller paints 25 years ago.
It is no longer available but Benjamin Moore &#;Cloud White, OC, is very close.
From his cutting-edge initial work in San Francisco to his innovations at Gensler, the founding of his own stable, Orlando Diaz-Azcuy Design Associates (ODADA), and his furniture collections for Steelcase, McGuire, HBF, Boyd Lighting and Matsuoka, his oeuvre reflects a dedication to what he calls “intelligent pragmatism and calm elegance.”.
It&#;s slightly warm. I also like Benjamin Moore OC for a pure white. But I develop custom colors for all of my clients, and for myself, especially here in the apartment, I&#;ve mixed all paints, totally custom. I reflect the success of paint application is in the hands of a paint craftsman.
Trinidad Sofa-by Orlando Diaz-Azcuy-MCA2810S | Baker-McGuire ...: Since the mids, Orlando Diaz-Azcuy has been a bright, unshakable force in the design planet. Born in Cuba in , he fled to the Merged States in the early s, eventually settling in Washington, DC, and later migrating to California to attend graduate school at Berkeley.And I don&#;t refuse the quality of Donald Kaufman paints, or Farrow & Ball.
DDS: Living with white.
ODA: A light and ivory color palette makes my happy and enhances everything in the rooms, no matter the style or mood.
Generally I find it tranquil, calm.
I like the flexibility offered by white or pale ivory walls. In San Francisco we hold bright light reflecting off the ocean and in the moisture of our ocean air. Ivory is luxurious, pure, exciting, and with its reflective power and energy it is better than any color.
Orlando Diaz-Azcuy Talks on Design
Orlando told me some of his secrets&#;and I&#;m sharing them with you for inspiration.WORKING WITH CONTRAST
&#;Design needs juxtaposition and contrast to come alive.
Mundane things often enliven luxurious décor, just as quiet phrasing and bass notes add balance to coloratura opera scores. Décor should not be unremittingly rich or minimal. You don&#;t see the beauty.
After receiving degrees in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban and regional planning, he worked for a number architectural and interior-design firms before launching his retain studio. Almost 20 years later, he has been recognized as designer of the year by Interiors magazine and inducted into its interior design hall of fame, along with earning various other prestigious laurels. I could not do it because I was employed by Gensler, and that was a conflict of interest, so we made an agreement that I would form a separate studio with my name two blocks from Gensler. I continued working for Gensler and my studio until the summer ofwhen I decided that I was going to completely sever the relationship with Gensler and devote my time to my own studio.In a room with museum-quality paintings or Greek antiquities, and opulent antiques, I may balance the luxury with simple white linen upholstery, bare floors or discreet and worn Oriental silk carpets, and some pared-down modern architecture.&#;
COLOR USED JUDICIOUSLY
&#;People think I never apply color, but it isn&#;t accurate.
I seldom use pattern, but I love color! In Cuba, as a teenager, I once painted my parents&#; living room shocking pink. I spend hours working on color schemes. Many people are not tuned to tone-on-tone colors, or a carefully selected and calibrated collection of whites, and they don&#;t spot subtlety.
I hope you arrive along for the ride. And, as my name has really taken a beating these last couple of years, -thank you Mr. Bezos, - feel free to think of me here by my nickname: Lex. And, please also enjoy this completely un-recognizable and years old headshot.Soft, neutral, barely-there colors are still colors. Some of our most exciting projects are genuine color inspiration. But I always look for the unusual shade, tone or hue. I&#;m happiest working with colors you can&#;t exactly name&#;pale cornflower blue, blush pink, blue-gray, an unusual cerulean dashed with gold.&#;
EDIT, EDIT, EDIT
&#;The most successful design is a result of rigorous, disciplined editing.
Simple and successful interiors are always the result of taking out and not putting in more things. A complex solution brought down to the minimal expression gets to the soul of the solution.&#;
ESSENTIAL TEXTURES
&#;Contrast emphasizes the special attributes of any interior.
Rough and smooth, textured and plain, curvy and straight, rich and rustic.
WOW,Thank you! I feel enjoy I had a full college course in interior design all in one post! His finding is such a calm, restfull home He created enough vacuum to actually see and perceive the furnishings.A room that&#;s all one note&#;all modern, totally monochromatic, all one period&#;lacks uniqueness.
FOCUS ON LIGHT
&#;Control and employ of light are the strongest elements of my design. Glow &#;natural and artificial--creates mood, a sense of comfort and well-being, and makes an interior totally functional.&#;
ACCESSORIES
&#;An interior without accessories it is an interior without phrase.
While I am known for controlled, tailored and very polished interiors, I personally appreciate eccentricity, and the jolt of the unexpected. Provocative conceptual art, launch objects, garden flowers, fine elderly paintings, contemporary sculpture. Well-edited collections, and have course a bookcase stacked with books, make a room come to life.&#;
Credits:
ALL IMAGES PUBLISHED ON THE STYLE SALONISTE ARE USED HERE WITH State PERMISSION OF THE HOLDERS.
Images of Orlando&#;s penthouse: David Duncan Livingston,
Portrait of Orlando in light jacket: Tim Street-Porter,
Portrait of Orlando in black shirt: Peter Tjahjadi: