Process makes perfect for Garrison Hullinger Interior Design’s McCormick Creek Farms Project.
Sometimes a home that looks perfect in an architect’s rendering may not turn out to reflect the original vision once the family moves in. But it doesn’t have to be this way, says Collin Kayser, senior interior designer at Garrison Hullinger Interior Design. Kayser says it’s rare that plans satisfy a client’s wants and needs the first time if an interior designer has not been involved from the beginning.
“You can get a silo effect,” Kayser says. “The architect may have designed a beautiful home, but by the time it comes to the interiors team—which is often part of a different company—all of a sudden this beautiful home is no longer functional or effective for how the client’s going to use it.”
The integrated practice at Portland’s Garrison Hullinger Interior Design helps avoid that. Kayser and Jon Chenier, senior designer in GHID’s custom home department, help the team build and design from the inside out for a seamless experience that takes into account often overlooked details—such as the distance one might carry their groceries from the garage to the pantry or how lighting is planned based on the furniture layouts—so that the home’s purpose and aesthetic feel really work.
The company’s McCormick Creek Farms project, a 10,000-square-foot hilltop home overlooking 50 acres of ranch land built for a blended family with five children, was a perfect example of how their collaborative process dials in form and function. Every inch of the home emerged through collaboration from the very beginning, and the result features elegant solutions, where each element fits together exactly as intended: GHID’s custom home design team developed the floor plan and exteriors, the residential interiors team designed the interiors, and the furniture and finishes were selected and arranged by GHID’s furniture, fixtures, and equipment team.
“My approach is to design the structure from the inside out,” explains Chenier.
The team starts with in-depth client meetings early in the design phase, where they ask a lot of questions about how the clients use their house, how they live in it, and how they see themselves using it from the moment they drive their car into the garage to the time they’re in their kitchen making a meal. For the McCormick Creek Farms project, finding solutions to suit daily life was paramount for this busy family of seven.
Everything in the home is perfectly suited to work together because it was chosen by a team, along with the clients, working together from the very beginning. To meet the needs of a large family with a lot of guests coming and going, the family needed effective flow through the main space, private spaces, a mud room, and floor-to-ceiling windows to bring in views of Mt. Hood. Finishes and furniture are beautiful and rustic, suitable for an active, outdoors-oriented family.
Once a plan is formed, GHID embraces 3D renderings to successfully match the look and feel of the home to the home’s usage. The perfect home may start with a list of requirements, but at GHID, that list is refined along the way by a team of professionals all looking at the home with the same end goals in mind: a space that is truly compatible with how people live inside the house.
In most homes—but especially with a family of seven—having interconnected space and private spaces, along with very functional spaces was important to everyone. The in-depth discussions and 3-D modeling brought that to life.
“Unlike having separate companies or separate departments design a home, where there’s often a sense of discontinuity, all of our teams work together from the very beginning to really get dialed in to how the home is used,” says Kayser.
For more info, visit GarrisonHullinger.com
