Murdock Young Architects Bathroom Designs
15 April 2010
“Fundamentally Serene”
I normally write about interior designers of bathrooms and kitchens, but every now and again I come across an articutectural firm that is doing such innovative work that I just have to spread the word. But the thing that particularly intrigues me about the subject of today’s blog is the journey these ideas have taken to get to me. I first saw the pictures on a blog site written in Dutch and stored it away for a future blog, thinking that there was much to write about. Imagine my surprise, though, when I recently translated the Dutch on Google and discovered that these ideas are not Dutch. They were written about by a Dutchman, but are, in fact from an American firm, namely, Murdock Young Architects.
As a matter of fact, these particular concepts found their origin in the Hamptons on Long Island in the state of New York, went to Holland, and are now visiting Southern California, where I mean to do my level best to spread them all over the world again. But along with disseminating the pictures, we really ought to say something about the people who designed these bathrooms. Actually, what you see here is the smallest part of what Murdock Young Architects are about, which I find intriguing to the utmost, to a point where if I were in the market for this kind of work and lived in that part of the world, I would very much be looking these people up.
I spent entirely too much of my life in the world of business, and one of the things I saw there was the facility with which the people who run those companies can (1) crank out a Mission Statement and (2) do absolutely nothing they said they would do in the aforementioned Mission Statement. I bring that up, though, because Murdock Young has posted the following as their philosophy: “Murdock Young practices an architecture of pragmatic response. Creative exploration and thorough investigation of the essential facts and distinctive possibilities of each site and client’s needs lead to organic, apt, and inevitable solutions that are true to their time and place.” What I find particularly refreshing about their philosophy, though, is that they actually live up to it, and for the proof of that, we need look no further than their portfolio of architectural marvels.
I have focused on their bathrooms, because that is how I came to know them, so to speak, but really, they are an architectural firm, which means they design and build the entire building. They work in both commercial and residential real estate, and wherever they go, their ideas and talents go with them. Even though I am focusing on their bathrooms, I did want to include one photograph of an entire structure that has sprang from their imagination, just to give you something of the flavor of the type of work these people are producing.
One of the things about these bathroom designs that I find especially appealing is their use of rustic materials like brick and thick, unadorned wood countertops. There is just something, I don’t know, elemental, I guess, about the juxtaposition of these raw materials alongside the sleek glass and clean lines of the bathrooms themselves that makes them both organic and modern. The bathroom as retreat is a frequent theme in these blogs, but here we have the concept elevated to perfection while remaining grounded in the fundamentals. These bathrooms and the homes in which they reside are shrines to serenity.
Joseph
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