For the complete slideshow, click the link below.

http://www.dwell.com/articles/top-brass.html

thanks for sharing; I'll be flying this week so I'll pick up Dwell.
Not that I can't buy it if I'm not flying, but something happens to me in an airport, I buy mags I don't usually buy, lol…..

In the scheme of things replating isn't that expensive.

Is it just me, or is this kitchen sort of sexy?

I admire the use of color and materials in this image and I would love to know how they came up with it. Though they discuss the process briefly in the article, I'd still like to understand how they were able to discard their own preconceptions about materials and create something beautiful, fresh and new.

I would like to see the elements of this kitchen superimposed on one that had more workspace, I think.

The br*ss, sorry dont like it at all. Brass, forever, reminds me of tacky Donald trump buildings. Flashy, not blingy :)
Even though this brass is not polished, it clashes with the floor and walnut somehow.

They don't like antiqued brasses-OK, I get that even if I do. They seem to value authenticity. OK, I get that too. Brushed brass is unfinished and not really authentic to anything. Which is fine. Except when you deride other finishes on brass as corny.

All that impracticality and it could have been so much simpler and more authentic. I still like the kitchen from a design point of view, if not something I would want to live with.

Client: We want color, lots of color.

Tragically hip designer: Color? We don't know how to use color. At school they taught us that color was for the weak and hoi polloi. We will make you a kitchen with only subtle colors, and will deign to include brass as a "color," although it is going to cost you bigtime. Satisfied?

Client: Oh, perfect! Now we have adopted [and I quote] "a Western sensibility, all gray."

Angie:
The writer sort of misinterpreted the color discussions that take place in design school and what the point behind these discussions is.

Unfortunately, the STUDENTS of design school sometimes misinterpret the discussions in the same way.

A good design from a purely "design-y" standpoint does not rely on color to make it happen, particularly in modernism. If you look at old design books or old Architectural Digests, most of the pictures are actually in black and white, and from this you can still evaluate design quality.
(and this includes some highly traditional projects).

Color can be a cheap trick. You can always tell a low budget commercial project because there is a lot of color and a lot of paint. This isn't Necessarily a Bad thing, because it serves it's purpose. "Colorless" or Monochromatic (but highly color saturated )designs need to have a certain strength on their own, while a Lot of Flaws can be can be camouflaged by the use of multiple colors. It's much cheaper to do a multicolor project than it is to do a monochromatic one, because nothing needs to match or be tightly correlated.

That said, a certain number of designers get out of school and do not so great or deadly dull work in the colorless genre. But, on the other hand, look how many Meh rooms we see in these forums that look so much better with a shot of color and accessories. If they were Great rooms, they would look great without it, too.

But the cheap use of color has become so ubiquitous that people seem to interpret anything without it now, as dull or lacking, somehow, and that isn't always the case.

I'm not into bright brass. At least, not since the early 80s. I do like the aged brass, but it's less .. new.

No one has mentioned that odd light fixture. It looks like it's not fully assembled! Perhaps it has brass pieces they've not yet stripped and plated...

Not my style. Different, but not for me.

I'd have to agree that the students must have misinterpreted the lessons if the clients' request for color "freaked [the designers] out." Perhaps the writer is guilty, too, to surmise that "So bright paint was out -- too easy, no integrity."

On the other hand, I don't object to designers "educating" their clients -- that's part of the reason we hire them, no? But it seems odd to me to reject the use of color out of hand.

It's okay: I know my house will never grace the pages of Dwell!

French wiring comes to the chandelier?

I would personally rather have the most lurid cheap looking 80s pseudo brass than anything in this kitchen, except maybe the tansu drawers under the stairs.

Speaking as someone who's known architects, children of architects and good friends who went off to architecture school, architecture schools in particular, compared to other design-related institutions, have kind of a cult set of dogmas that are foisted on students, things that go well beyond actual principles of design. There's still an excessive modernist influence for an industry that really doesn't get that many modernist projects. Many architects' houses look like this one--no ornament, no decor, let the structure shine, all that stuff. And the only thing your eye actually ever sees is the junky kids' toys on the floor.

I like the brass, though. Silly to dismiss a metal because of its association with a single decade. Wait till farm sinks and marble become objects of ridicule. They will.

I think that's why Bad architects design houses where there is no good place to put most of the furniture. And I don't mean modernists, I mean a lot of the houses people are trying to untangle on the building a home forum.

And they spray painted the handles to their pitchers as well.

"But the cheap use of color has become so ubiquitous that people seem to interpret anything without it now, as dull or lacking, somehow, and that isn't always the case."

Pal - good point, thanks for making it.

I think what's going on with the light fixture wires is that the fixture functions like a mobile, and thus the wires need to be able to rotate around the center post. Could have been done more elegantly, perhaps, but it's an interesting concept.

I think this kitchen is really fun. I don't see myself using gold in my new place, but at least it's different and cool. :-)

1) Clients tells designers they are used to a lot of color
2) Designers "freak out"
3) Designers sell clients on idea that brass is "color"
4) Designers deliver a virtually colorless house
5) Clients are happy

WHAT???? This story is wrong at so many levels.

And it was all capped by this sad quote from the client:

"For us this is a new experience, a home with a Western sensibility, all gray."

My favorite insights are marcolo's: he liked the work less after he read about it (I agree - probably the writer/architect disconnect mentioned by Angie and Pal), and,

"Silly to dismiss a metal because of its association with a single decade."

Exactly. I thought I hated brass, but I'd never seen it used like this before, and I think it's gorgeous. Maybe it's a GenX thing, overreacting to the design sins of the '80s, our formative years, but I feel the same visceral yuck when I see green marble (think 80s bathroom floors). Perhaps I should (good grief) keep an open mind about materials until I see how they can be used...

The kitchen is cool. The mix of gray and brass is pretty now--someone really tried to sell me on it in my DR but it didn't work in my light.

I just think the story is bizarre. The architects actually seem to think that their own flaws and lack of competence with a design element are some kind of normative rule. I'd be embarrassed by the story, actually.

I didn't read the article; I'm very surprised that this is what the architects delivered to clients who requested lots of color.

Although most (shelter) magazines no longer publish design that is particularly affordable, Dwell *acts* like it does, and usually doesn't.Dwell is not really about interior design in its' complete sense either. The magazine is about houses or buildings, that usually manage to have some furniture inside, but unless it's something notable like Nakashima or Maarten Baas, I get them impression that you are supposed to consider it relatively secondary to the "real" design going on.

When they do feature furniture, it's green, conceptual or something else, which is fine, but they tend to feature it on a blank background as if you are supposed to examine it, but not actually sit on it.

I once wrote a letter that I was tired of seeing pictures of unmade beds in bedrooms that looked like they might stink a little, and kitchens that indicated a hint of sour milk. They didn't publish it.

LOVE the "natural slab" walnut countertops in contrast with the very cold white base.

Won't wood warp if it's on a substrate like that cabinet base, though?

I am no designer - even though I play one in my house and any house my friends let me play in - but there's something about the floor that bothers me.... can't put my finger on it.

Anyone else?

My mother filled my house with brass in the '80s too (brass and peach to be precise) and I admit I still have a problem with it. But I don't mind the hood here. I am trying to overcome my childish hang-ups though, but it can take decades.

sarahhomeremodel - just the fact that it is oak perhaps??

I keep thinking that I should like dwell - after all, it seems to be targeted at people somewhat like me. I try to enjoy it when I pick up a copy, but I'm always disappointed, no, not really disappointed, just totally unmoved, or worse, uninspired. Give me modernist leaning European house porn any day though. Lots of inspiration there.

... you have summed it up perfectly. .

The lighting fixture with unkempt wires gives the impression of an unfortunate tenement housing project. A bit creepy in a way. I don't like anything about this room, very off putting in a disconnected way, nothing goes together at all. The style is wrong for the elements used. Re: article ~It's that stagnant assumed superiority one feels for making something ugly then trying to convince the world how chic the unappealing mess is and that the masses are hopelessly ignorant.

Yeah well, rooms like this always remind me of my cousin and her husband. Their decorator had this hideous sofa (an early variant of the deconstructed sofa, I guess) with a lurid floral upholstery applied with the back of the fabric as the visible side. I was with my cousin when the decorator assured her that her husband had been in and really wanted this sofa, and with the husband when the decorator assured him that my cousin adored the sofa, and they lived for many years with a sofa they both hated but said nothing because they each thought the other loved it.

Shrug.