Bedrooms are, or should be, used for a fairly narrow range of activities, such as sleeping or recuperating from illness. An activity, seemingly unacknowledged in design discussions, is sex. While this may be embarrassing for clients, an architect, like a doctor, must make discussing these things comfortable when planning a home.
So, what should we not have in bedrooms? Televisions, computers, and other things that may detract our attention from the tasks at hand, so to speak, should not be in the bedroom. An alarming trend in American b
edroom design is to make it ever larger and more inclusive: The "master suite" is now so large and complex that it can be used to run a medium-sized business.
What should we have? I think it is fun to have some sort of visual "encouragement" in the bedroom. I like the sign (see upper photo) that must have been some sort of filling station (or ice cream parlor?) direction, "squeeze trigger for pressure". I also like a set of hand-painted wood signs I found at the curb in New York, "amateur", "all male", and "bondage" (lower photo). Given their color, they must have been painted in the mid 1980s. These must have described the films found at an adult bookstore, which were under attack during the Giuliani administration. You can rearrange them as you wish!
Two armchairs have been living in a storage locker since my siblings and I cleared-out my mother's apartment last year. They are identical and were last new probably in the 1950s, when my parents immigrated to Canada from what was then Yugoslavia. The chairs followed my parents to Chicago in 1959 or 1960.
My maternal grandmother, Milosava Petković (née Milić) lived with my parents and my siblings. She was a lifelong needlepointer. Probably after we visited Florence in the mid-1970s, my grandmother began needlepointing Bargello-style patterns, usually pillows. I don't know what made her take on such a large project, but she needlepointed enough to re-cover both armchairs (except the backs). The cushions are a little worn (see the rip, in the photo above, probably caused by one of my poorly-behaved nieces or nephew). They are to be refurbished next week at a local upholsterer.
These chairs synthesize memories and values important to me: The possibility of a new life, both for my family (in its escape from Yugoslavia) and for the chairs (with reupholstery); childhood; my grandmother; and the exhuberance and joyfulness of a jolt of color. They will be a powerful force for good in my new home.
The armchairs will also guide the color palette for the apartment ("dreamsicle" (orange and white) and blue). The palette is based on a theory I have about color. There are studies that have found that exposure to various colors can, slightly, change one's perception of temperature. As a result, I believe that in warm weather, to feel more comfortable, one should be exposed to cool colors (blues and greens). In cool weather, warm colors (reds, yellows, and orange). To cover the hot and cold weather in Chicago over the course of the year, I plan to have curtains and certain major pieces of furniture be orange, white, and/or blue. I have two dreamsicles already in place.
Bedrooms are, or should be, used for a fairly narrow range of activities, such as sleeping or recuperating from illness. An activity, seemingly unacknowledged in design discussions, is sex. While this may be embarrassing for clients, an architect, like a doctor, must make discussing these things comfortable when planning a home.
edroom design is to make it ever larger and more inclusive: The "master suite" is now so large and complex that it can be used to run a medium-sized business.
