Organic Minimalist
Interior Design
A Personal Statement on My Practice
I opened my design studio in March 2008. The timing was bad. The financial crisis happened six months later. My clients were mostly real estate developers working on high-end residential projects. They cancelled everything. I had two staff members and a lease on a small office space in Brooklyn.
I spent that winter taking any job I could find. Kitchen renovations. Bathroom remodels. One client wanted me to design a home theater in his basement. I did it. I needed the money.
My early work was decorative. Lots of textures, lots of objects, lots of color. I filled spaces with furniture and art and accessories. That was what clients wanted. That was what I thought good design looked like. I had trained at Parsons and spent three years at a firm in Manhattan that specialized in traditional American interiors. We put crown molding on everything.
Around 2011, I renovated my own apartment. I was living in a 400 square foot studio in Williamsburg. I brought home fabric samples and furniture catalogs and spent weeks picking out pieces. I bought a velvet sofa. I bought three different throw pillows. I bought a vintage rug from a dealer in New Hampshire.
After six months, I hated living there. The space felt heavy. I would come home from work and feel tired just looking at all the stuff. One Saturday morning I started removing things. I took out the rug. I took out the throw pillows. I donated the sofa to a neighbor. By Sunday night, I had almost nothing left.
That apartment sat mostly empty for about two years. Just a bed, a table, two chairs, some plants. My friends thought something was wrong with me. My mother asked if I was having financial problems.
I was not having financial problems. I was starting to understand something about space that I had not learned in school.
The Shift in My Practice
I did not immediately change how I worked with clients. I kept doing decorative projects through 2013 and 2014. I needed the income. My studio was finally stable. I had built relationships with contractors and suppliers. I had a small but steady flow of referrals.
In 2015, a couple hired me to design their loft in Tribeca. They had just bought the space. 2,800 square feet, raw concrete floors, exposed ductwork. They told me they wanted something "minimal but warm." I had heard this phrase before. Usually it meant white walls with expensive furniture.
Raw spaces offer the purest canvas for organic minimalism
I showed them my initial concepts. Lots of white. Clean lines. Designer pieces. They looked at the renderings and said it felt cold. They were right.
I went back to my office and sat with the floor plans for three days. I thought about my own apartment. I thought about why empty space could feel warm or cold. I started sketching ideas that had nothing to do with furniture or finishes.
I called the clients and asked if I could start over. They said yes.
The second version of that project became the foundation of what I now call organic minimalism. I focused on three things: natural materials, natural light, and negative space. I used white oak for the floors and walnut for the built-in storage. I left large sections of wall completely empty. I positioned the furniture to follow the path of sunlight through the windows.
The project took fourteen months. It went over budget by about 40%. The clients were patient. When it was finished, they cried. I did not cry but I came close.
What Organic Minimalism Means to Me
I should explain what I mean when I use this phrase. I am not talking about a style. I am not talking about a set of rules or a particular aesthetic.
I am talking about a way of thinking about interior space.
The "minimal" part is about restraint. I remove everything that does not need to be there. I do not add decorative objects. I do not add throw pillows. I do not add accent walls. Every element in a space should have a reason for existing. If I cannot explain why something is there, I take it out.
The "organic" part is about materials and forms. I use wood, stone, linen, wool, clay, concrete. I avoid plastic and synthetic fabrics. I avoid perfect geometric shapes. A table edge should have a slight curve. A wall should have texture you can feel with your hand. A floor should show the grain of the wood.
These two ideas work together. When you remove the unnecessary objects, the materials become visible. When you use natural materials, empty space becomes warm.
I wrote this down in a document for my own reference around 2016. I did not show it to anyone for two years. I was still not sure I could build a practice around it.
The Palette of Natural Materials
Wood
Stone
Linen
Wool
Clay
Concrete
The Difficult Years
From 2016 to 2019, I tried to transition my practice toward this approach. It did not go well.
Most clients came to me expecting the decorative work I had done before. They had seen my portfolio on my website. They wanted that. When I proposed something different, they got confused. Several clients fired me. One wrote a negative review online saying I had "no vision."
I redesigned my website in 2017. I removed the old portfolio images and replaced them with photos of the Tribeca loft and two smaller projects I had done in the same style. Traffic to my website dropped by about 60%. Inquiries dropped even more.
My accountant sat me down and showed me the numbers. Revenue was down for the second year in a row. I had let one staff member go. I was paying myself less than I had in 2012.
He asked me if I wanted to continue. He said I could close the studio, go back to working for someone else, and probably double my income. He was not wrong.
I told him I wanted to keep going. He said okay but suggested I give myself a deadline. If things did not improve by the end of 2019, I should reconsider.
What Changed
In the spring of 2019, a magazine editor contacted me. She had seen photos of the Tribeca loft somewhere online. She wanted to feature it in a story about new directions in residential design. I said yes.
The article came out in September 2019. The response was bigger than I expected. My website traffic increased. I started getting inquiries from people I had never met. Several of them used the phrase "organic minimalism" in their emails. They had read it in the article.
By December 2019, I had more project inquiries than I could handle. I hired a new staff member in January 2020. I hired another one in June.
The pandemic changed the market in ways that helped my practice. People were stuck in their homes. They started thinking about what they actually needed in their living spaces. They started questioning why they owned so much stuff. Some of them found me.
I am now working on projects I could not have imagined five years ago. A house in Connecticut. An apartment in Los Angeles. A small hotel in upstate New York. All of them share the same principles. Natural materials. Natural light. Negative space.
What I Have Learned
I do not have a manifesto. I do not have a set of design rules I can hand to someone. What I have is a set of observations from fifteen years of practice.
Empty space is not empty. It has presence and weight. A room with less furniture can feel more substantial than a room with more.
Materials matter more than objects. A wall of exposed brick will outlast any piece of art you hang on it. A solid wood table will be beautiful long after the decorative accessories around it are forgotten.
Natural light changes everything. I spend more time thinking about windows than about any other element in a space. I orient furniture toward light sources. I avoid heavy window treatments.
Restraint is difficult. Clients often want to add things at the end of a project. They get nervous about empty walls or unused corners. Part of my job is to help them resist this impulse.
I wrote all of this down in a document last year. I have been thinking about publishing it in some form. A book, maybe. A long essay on my website. I am not sure yet.
Current Work and Future Plans
My studio now has four employees. We are working on six active projects. I am turning away more work than I am accepting.
I do not say this to boast. I say it because ten years ago I thought this kind of practice was impossible. I thought clients would never pay for empty space. I was wrong.
I am planning to expand the studio next year. I want to bring on a junior designer who can develop their own projects under my supervision. I want to take on larger commercial projects. I have been in conversation with a developer about a small apartment building in the Bronx.
There is a risk in growth. I have seen other studios lose their identity as they get bigger. They take on too many projects. They hire too many people. The work becomes generic.
I think about this constantly. I do not have a solution. I just try to pay attention.
My wife tells me I should take more vacations. She is probably right. I took one week off last year. I spent most of it thinking about a project I was working on.
This is not a healthy way to work. I know that. I am trying to change.
A Note on the Name
I did not invent the phrase "organic minimalism." I do not know who did. When I started using it around 2016, I thought I had made it up. I later found other designers using similar language.
I do not care about the terminology. I care about the work. If someone wants to call it something else, that is fine with me.
What matters is the space. What matters is how it feels to be in a room. What matters is whether the design serves the people who live there.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn — where it all began
I still live in that apartment in Williamsburg. I still have almost no furniture. The plants are bigger now. The table is the same one I bought in 2011.
I am happy there.