A common challenge in larger refurbishments is maintaining the balance between two ‘forces’ exerted on an overall design: the new structure being proposed, and the life that will actually happen inside it. Too often, urgency around the build lets structure become the default winner, and everything else, softness included, gets treated as an afterthought.

I’m developing a longer piece on this, because the interesting question isn’t that this tension exists, but how homeowners can hold the process better and end up with a more considered result with fewer missed opportunities. This isn’t so much about which decision matters more. It’s about two qualities of thought that are ideally both heard from the outset.

Perhaps because this subject is on my mind, I am noticing examples of this specific tension between structure and flow all around me at a smaller scale, in the materials and objects we live with and that we specify as designers. It seems to me that the best of these, those which remain fascinating and that we do not tire of, express this tension deliberately rather than resolve it.

Real timber flooring is the clearest example. It’s still laid as planks or other rectangles in a rectilinear grid, but the grain pattern running through each piece is fluid, botanical, and never repeats. That contrast of a rigid pattern against an organic material, is a large part of why real timber flooring remains so appealing and effective in interiors, even now we have many other alternatives available.

The combination of timber species, grain character, and lay pattern allow for great variety and all affect the final feel of the space. Designers make these selections, particularly lay pattern, with intent: sometimes the finished floor needs to function as a serene but tactile backdrop, other times as a strong graphic element. Whether a space can take parquet, a chevron layout or extra-wide boards without that dominating the energy, fighting other elements for attention or being wasted beneath furniture, depends on the room’s anatomy and overall design scheme.

I find the same fascinating quality in smaller objects, and recently in a pair of candleholders designed by Andersson & Voll for Nedre Foss.

They’re cast iron: a heavy, industrial material we associate with pans and fire surrounds, usually cast in an efficient shape where form follows function closely. These are the opposite. Asymmetric, incorporating both angular and curved forms, they carry visible traces of the hands that made them.

They read differently from every angle, and differently again once candles are standing in them. That, to me, is good design in miniature: structure and softness held in the same object, neither one winning.

The images used in this blog are a mix from our own projects and some featuring timber flooring from Element 7, Pur Natur and Ted Todd all of whose products we have used in current or past work.