Poetic Elegance
How do materials speak to us and each other?
Unconventional Andrée Putman
INTERIOR DESIGNER
1925-2013
FRANCE
優雅
Yūga
Considered an eccentric maverick, Andrée Putman began her design career in the 1970s. Her work is timeless, making it difficult to date. Her pared down, minimalist approach to interiors strikes a popular consciousness even today.
“I love America, and I love American women. But there is one thing that deeply shocks me - American closets. I cannot believe one can dress well when you have so much”. - Andrée Putman
Often with humor and surprise, she was very innovative and endearing. She reconciled materials that are natural and luxe.
She cleared spaces to rediscover their origin and purpose. She was masterful in zoning spaces and areas without the use of fixed walls. Her spaces overflow, intermingle, intertwine and change with time and use. She broke the conventional rules: why dine in the dining room, cook in the kitchen and sleep in the bedroom when one can overcome obstacles and change one’s ways?
Putman’s interiors revealed a subtle but powerful idea. She expressed the concept that modernity is humanized and embraced it through glimpses of the dramatic paired with a simplistic humility.
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Andrée Putman created designs that are earnest and honest expressions, simple in their pure, often geometric shapes. These shapes are formed not necessarily in an organic way as we are accustomed to think of as wabi-sabi, but in a sensual way that continues to weave the ephemeral with the permanent. They remind us of the transiency and fragility of life.
Andrée Putman courageously asked: “Why dine in the dining room, cook in the kitchen and sleep in the bedroom when one can overcome obstacles and change one’s ways?…It is not about bathing in the living room and cooking in the bedroom but rather about opening spaces to various activities. Why should places be reduced to one function instead of favoring the sensations they offer to us?”
Refusing to be confined by convention, Putman allows for the individuals to inhabit their space in a more imaginative manner. By shifting boundaries and surface planes permeated by light, natural or not, their spaces overflow, intermingle, intertwine and change with time and use. We experience the layers of their fully inclusive and thoughtful spaces. I share these guiding principles in my own homes and created environments. I share some glimpses of my success.
Inclusive built environments create calm. A designer’s universe is made of memories and the ghosts of feelings past. Design opens up a dream world where anything becomes possible and one can vent long-cherished desires.
