The Columns Could Not Move, So Everything Else Did
Two columns could not be moved. So we moved everything else.
Two columns stand in the middle of this home. Walk the whole floor, and you will not find either one.
The Two That Could Not Go
It is a conventional beam-and-column structure. Buildings like this are honest: everything that needs holding up is held up, and structurally there is nothing wrong. The problem was entirely in the plan. Those two columns could be neither removed nor moved, and every line inside had to let them through first. The earliest bar ran crossways, not because it looked good, but because it had to clear the columns.
The usual answer is to accept it. Box the columns square, arrange the furniture around them, and after a while you get used to it. We are more stubborn than that, and had no plan to get used to it. Nor did the client want the standard answer: not a straight bar off a catalogue, but a bar wrapped around the centre of the room.
So Everything Else Moved
So we curved the whole interior. The walls curve, the ceiling follows, the shelving follows, and every corner is gone. The curve does two jobs here. One is to carry the eye: with nowhere to stop, it keeps moving forward. The other is to swallow those two columns into the surface. You can touch them; you cannot see them. Nobody notices the second job, and that is exactly as it should be.
Three Circles
A bar that wraps the centre cannot be straight, and once one thing is round, it is hard for anything beside it to stay square. The public area ended up with three circles, each a different shape on a different axis. The largest is an ellipse over the whole area: one in the ceiling, one in the floor, aligned above and below. The true circle is the bar: one in the ceiling, one in the counter. Stand in the living room and there is a circle above your head and a circle beneath your feet, and the place between them is yours.
A continuous surface also chooses its materials. Stone will not take a curve, so it stays in a few places: the feature wall and the ellipse in the floor are the same stone, standing up as wall and lying down as floor. Walls and ceiling take a coating that can be spread over a curve, mixed to sit close to the overall grey. That grey is not a stock colour; it was drawn out of the terrazzo and the stone. The palette came out of discussion and settled on the cool side: the public area has one base colour, grey, and blue lands only on the cabinetry and in one bathroom, like a point of deep water in cool grey.
The Edges Are Drawn with Light
Take away the corners and the space loses one thing: its edges. A square room uses shadow and corner to tell you where wall ends and ceiling begins; a curve has neither. So the edges are drawn with light. Where coating meets stone, along the rim of the curved ceiling, under the base of the cabinets, a slot is left for a light line. You never see the lamp. You only see the light.
The light runs along the curve, your eye runs with it, all the way to the glass doors. Beyond is the balcony, and further out, the hills. The sheer curtain is not drawn back. The hills are there; you know it. You are simply not looking today.
It Does Not Intend to Show You Everything at Once
A continuous curve leaves no room for a door frame. Door and wall are made as one surface, and closed, you cannot tell where the door is. So this home looks simpler than it is. Standing in the public area, you assume you are seeing all of it. Push one panel of wall and there is a study; through the study is the main bedroom. Behind the curved wall beside the public area there is also a karaoke room. The home has not grown. It simply does not intend to show you everything at once.
Two Temperatures
At the main bedroom, the curve lets go. The floor turns to wood, the walls to dark fabric, and the light turns yellow. The main bathroom continues on: walls in an ochre-brown art plaster, the internal corners still rounded, though here the rounding hides nothing. It is only there to be easy to clean.
One home, two temperatures. One side for guests, one for sleep. Close the door, and all those curves and all that light stay outside. That is how you know you are home.
The two columns are still there. Not one is missing, and not one can be seen.
"Every place in a home should be left for a person."
Bring your floor plan, and we will look at it together.