01.20.09
Old and New
The French have an incredible ease and cleverness for combining the old and new. With a background in Interior Design, I have often admired rooms filled with fabulous antiques seamlessly accented with contemporary pieces. Integrating the past and present is an art that I enjoy experimenting with in my own home. Yet, more than an art form, as with most French rationale - it just makes sense - to create a home that tells the story of its residents both past and present.
This concept is not only reflected in French interior design, but also can be viewed throughout Paris. Sometimes I like to think what I might have created if I had been asked to design a new entrance to the Louvre. No doubt, I would have tried to fashion a structure that would blend in with the time period of the existing buildings. But what was chosen? The design of a Chinese American architect, I. M. Pei, was selected representing the old and new. His explanation, “The solid is for the dead, but the transparent is for the living.”