DesignLed Creates a Theatrical Interior for a Dublin Home
Lisa Marconi, a resident of Dublin, changed her career path ten years ago from documentarian to interior designer, learning the trade on her own. As the principal of DesignLed, she has developed a practice that is influenced by her experience in the visual arts but places a significant emphasis on client participation and collaboration. Perhaps as a result of her outsider viewpoint, Marconi approaches each job with a particularly accommodating attitude. “I don’t have very strict rules about what you can and cannot, should and should not do,” the woman declares.
It should come as no surprise, however, that when a couple approached Marconi with a house project filled with extremely particular requests—dark teal walls, for example—as well as some essentially contradicting ones, she happily embraced the task. The customers were demolishing a 1970s home and replacing it with a more contemporary structure that was fashioned after the renowned Georgian architecture of the Irish capital. The 4,500-square-foot, U-shaped house would be two floors tall, with formal and informal living areas, five bedrooms, and wide hallways connecting them. It would also need to feel comfortable for a family with young children. The goal set forward by DesignLed was to create an interior that was both aesthetically pleasing and accommodating to the many visitors the family hosts, without going overboard.
HOW THIS HOME INTERIOR REFLECTS DUBLIN’S GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE
A crucial component of the designer’s overall plan is something so small that it almost goes unnoticed at first, even though it starts as soon as you step through the front door: the use of bespoke wall paneling to visually connect the home’s modern interior and late eighteenth-century facade. The double-height entry hall features twin staircases on either side, framed by vertical panels with soft tone wallpaper featuring herons. The room’s massive bubble chandelier and oak parquet de Versailles flooring contribute to the room’s immediate wow factor. DesignLed
Though the walls are color-blocked in aqua and the requested teal, the formal sitting room features more prominent and traditional molding. The paintings are acrylics with modernist influences by contemporary Irish artist John Redmond, and the furniture is what Marconi calls “a motley crew of uber-modern and vintage,” which includes modern pieces like a maroon Terje Ekstrøm chair and a purple Sacha Lakic sofa juxtaposed with a pair of 1960s oak armchairs the clients already owned. She says, “We really enjoyed that contrast.” Another customary use for the molding is to conceal a cabinet bar that is built into the wall and the entrance leading to the study that is next to it.
One Design Detail: Hidden Doorways
The main bedroom’s paneling, which is more understated upstairs and updates the traditional arch form, conceals the entrance to the en suite bathroom and boudoir-style dressing area. The majority of the main rooms do in reality have secret entrances. “It’s a method of decreasing the scale and giving them a sense of confinement, so you don’t just see doors everywhere,” Marconi says. “It makes the house feel more like a cozy family home than this enormous mansion.” To further enhance the impact, each room and wing of the house has an own personality instead of a uniform style that tries to make the areas blend together effortlessly. The designer goes on, “Of course, we wanted the project to make sense as a whole, but we also wanted the rooms to stand alone.”
To that aim, the open-plan kitchen, dining, and living space that comprises the opposite wing is bright, simple, and neutral, enhanced with natural materials like oak and Dolomite stone. In contrast, the guest room next to the teal sitting room and study is painted deep crimson. With a lot of softer textures, such as velvet upholstery and wall-to-wall carpeting beneath Kitty Joseph’s Optik rug, the main bedroom has a more pastel aesthetic.
Every space features a different type of statement lighting fixture, from the sleek, brass linear pendant above the kitchen island to the sumptuous crystal chandelier in the dressing room, to further emphasize its distinct design character. The designer states that the large passageways that connect these large, individual spaces are painted a simple white color to serve “as a visual palette cleanser.” DesignLed
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