Paul Raff Studio
7 July 2010
“The Whole World is Watching!”
One of the virtues of being the permanent blogger du jure is that I have my permission to write about whatever I want in these blogs, so I can occasionally go a bit afield from the bathrooms and kitchens that tend to make up the most of our fare. The one thing that has most interested me in these blogs, though, is design, and I tend to follow it wherever it leads. Not too many of us really think about it in those terms, but the truth is everything we use these days has been designed by someone, be it a chair, a table, even something as seemingly mundane as a ballpoint pen. Trust me, someone sat in front of an easel or a Computer Assisted Drawing Program and worked out the layout and function of the piece. Of course, when I talk about design, I tend to hunt for somewhat larger quail, so kitchen and bathroom designs have become one of the staples on this site. But where design is especially manifest, I think, is w
hen one examines the work of an architect, which is what I mean to do with today’s blog.
Paul Raff Studio is an architectural firm that operates out of Toronto, Canada, and which is creating work that is probably best described as stunning. In seeking out material for these blogs, I tend to focus my attentions on kitchens and bathrooms, but I am actually interested in just about anything that can be put into a house-and the house itself. Working, as I do, in my own book-lined study (over a thousand books, for those who care about such things), I am always interested in home offices, and especially those that are laid out to take full advantage of this modern computer age. I began my own writing with a stack of notebook paper and a pencil, not using a typewriter until the end of the process, but once I got a computer that began to change. Unfortunately, I still have a separate desk that no longer suits me as I now do all of my composing at this computer keyboard (advice for young writers: learn how to T
YPE; I’m certainly glad I did!).
The first thing I noticed about the home office above is that it has the layout I wish my own study did, but as I looked at it further, I found myself being increasingly impressed with the totality of the design itself. The under-the-staircase layout does more than take advantage of what might otherwise have been wasted space. It transformed this large, open floor plan of a home office into something cozy, while still maintaining all those attributes! And the large chair by the fireplace just has to be the place to end a working day with a, well in my case, nice thick history book!
But the home office was, as they say, but the tip of the iceberg, as I learned when I visited Mr. Raff’s website and began poking around. Paul Raff Studio has been in practice as a creative consultancy since 1992, and became an incorporated architecture firm in 2003. They employ experts in architecture, development strategy, multi-media, landscape and interior design, all of these items, I must add, being done to a 
fare-thee-well. They like to say they create projects where art become life, and when you examine the pictures they’ve posted, the truth of that is immediately apparent.
Architecture exists at many different levels. It is so much more than the floor plan of the tract homes in the Sunday Real Estate Section. A one-off architectural design will, if it is done well, take into consideration every aspect of the clients’ lifestyle, the style of the building, the materials to be used, the budget to be adhered to in such a way that it does not strangle the project’s innovation, the view from every window, even how the home integrates itself into the land. And for those architects with the chops for it, there is the interior design of the home, but again, that sort of thing requires considerably more than a quick leafing through a brochure of cabinet designs. Original architecture deserves an original interior, something that pops, but that pop
s in such a way that it never overwhelms, but instead, does its job with elegant flair, if that’s possible.
Part of this, of course, is my own tastes talking, but I find that the designs that work the best for me are those that quietly do their job, while rewarding those who make a closer examination of the work itself.
I do not know the actual working range of Mr. Raff’s firm, but his contact page shows a world map with lines going all over it. And now, in my own sweet way from some 2600 miles away in San Diego, California, I am doing my best to get his name known around the world. Because how often do you get a chance to watch a real master at work?
Joseph
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