"More with Less"
I learned that early, growing up on a grape farm in Michigan. Farming requires the ultimate DIY spirit, boundless ingenuity and hard work. There is no handbook and the work never stops.
My good fortune is to have parents from very diverse cultural backgrounds and such the perfect American experiment. My father being from Germany and my mother from Mexico, the combination, some say contrast, has both influenced and the laid the foundation for my sense of order, leisure and aesthetics. I watched my father build the furniture and toys I grew up using and with access to a woodshop and a barn full of "stuff", I was encouraged to design and make the things I needed or wanted. He was my first influence. Hardworking, talented, meticulous, precise, a perfectionist, the type to, "measure twice and cut once". Only later did I come to understand and fully appreciate these qualities and their impact on my future career.
I earned my Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from Loyola University of Chicago in 1995. Interior Architecture and design was never my first choice, however fate intervened when Loyola merged with Mundelein, it's sister school and I failed statistics for the third time. My teacher/mentor, was both an Interior designer and an Architect, her emphasis on history and the foundations of architecture, design and construction, have influenced and continue to inform my work today. An internship, at Holabird & Root, in my third year, became an opportunity to join the interiors department after graduation.
Chicago is a good city to work in if your into architecture and Holabird & Root had it all. A storied past with a current connection to IIT, the modernist architecture school founded in Chicago, after Bauhaus left Germany.
A full service firm that had every discipline, from structural to mechanical engineer to learn from, focusing mainly on educational work for universities and corporate interiors. Several of the partners and architects were teachers at IIT as well, so the studio and work produced was influenced by the ethos of modernism and their approach to space planning, details and materials. French curves not allowed, grids encouraged and expected.
Commercial work had it's creative limits and I wanted to explore the residential side of interiors when an opportunity came via a fellow designer to work at RKA, a small boutique residential firm that created custom hand built turn-key interiors.
Incredible projects, some global with the ability to control the level of design quality and detail to the highest degree, while working with the best fabricators and artisans in the country. Project highlights include, a full floor build out at the Palmolive building, (ironically a Holabird & Root building), a Carlo Bugatti inspired smoking room for Michael Jordan and a villa for a Michigan family in St Jean Cap Ferrat, France.
In-between working for RKA on two separate occasions, I joined the architecture and interiors firm, Tilton & Lewis. Working on both corporate interiors and residential architecture, but also specializing in Historic Frank Llyod Wright restoration. John Tilton owned and lived in a Frank Lloyd wright house and worked in the prairie style for many clients. His influence cannot be unstated. I learned the most important rule of space planning, solve the circulation first, then decorate the box. Project highlights include, Prairie style custom home in downstate Illinois and the visitors center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, won as a design competition.
During my time working with these studios, I continued to develop and produce my own ideas and projects under the Space+Objekts studio umbrella. Hosting several multi-media experiences, designing and fabricating furniture, lighting, jewelry, Concrete sculptures, also working in graphics, product development, packaging and wayfinding. The name meant to describe the types of projects I was interested in, with the added benefit of being specific and general at the same time.
In 2007 I committed my full time efforts toward Space+Objekts and like all things overtime, it has evolved. The intention, that has not changed, is that this studio is an ongoing experiment, a revelation that design permeates and influences all aspects of everyday life. It is a study of human behavior and our relationship to space and the objects within them, through living experience. It is an opportunity to collaborate, educate, facilitate, to be responsible with our resources and environment, to recognize the coming horizon, and to meet the those needs with thoughtful, elegant responsible design solutions. It is a place where ideas matter more then materials and the ultimate challenge is to create more with less!
I am excited to meet the challenge. How can I help?
Bleyer
Services
Custom Interiors
Custom Objekts
Art Consultation
Fabrikation
Space Planning
Project Management