Decorating with Compromise (continued)
In Washington, D.C., versatile designer Nestor Santa-Cruz helped marry his clients' very different tastes while freshening up their century-old home's traditional architecture
The 1911 four-story townhouse, located between the National Zoo and Piney Creek Park, had been renovated some years before, but the entryway was poorly defined by what the owners refer to as a "knee wall," a perpendicular extension of the chair-rail-height wainscoting that halfheartedly separated entry from living space. To remedy this unsatisfying configuration, the couple called a friend, Nestor Santa-Cruz (a highly regarded professional who is now a design director at Gensler). His solution was a floor-to-ceiling partition -- stationary white lacquer louvers within a walnut frame (see previous page).
But removing the knee wall necessitated refinishing the floors, and since it housed electrical outlets, demolition also required rewiring. The husband, a partner at a prominent international architecture firm, also wanted outlets disguised and lighting installed for art, and the wife (owner of an area showroom representing modern furniture lines) desired more unified interiors. One thing, as they say, led to another.
Both of his clients had been married before, and both had furniture of their own, so Santa-Cruz needed to find (or create) the hidden harmony. "We had never married our furniture," says the wife. "And Nestor's wonderful gift was to look at it all and say, 'Keep this and this; don't bother bringing that.' "
Santa-Cruz wanted to update the house while still respecting its pre-World War I details -- without altering the original architecture. To achieve that delicate balance in the living room, he devised a large fabric panel stretched over a wood frame to cover one long wall, obscuring but not damaging the original trim. "As much as he respects traditional architecture," says Santa-Cruz of the husband, "he wanted something modern. The fabric wall in the living room was a way to introduce modern 'architecture' into the traditional envelope."
The kitchen got a simple palette: squash-yellow walls (Benjamin Moore's York Harbor) with white cabinets and trim. The room now has some classic modern pieces that escort it into the 21st century.
There were other minor structural changes, too. The use of dramatically scaled objects in smaller spaces is a Santa-Cruz signature, and in the barely ten-foot-wide dining room, that translated into a lantern chandelier suspended over a custom-designed table. To ensure it didn't hang too low, he had a square opening cut into the ceiling and the chandelier suspended from the floor joist above. (Santa-Cruz dealt with the narrow room by creating a banquette along one wall and moving the table and chairs toward it, clearing space for traffic to and from the kitchen.)
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