At the beginning of the 21st century, Australian designer Greg Natale had tired of silent and minimalist interiors.
“At that time in Sydney, we were very inspired by John Pawson and David Chipperfield,” said Mr. Natale, 51, referring to the famous British architects for their sober purist designs. “I also love his work, but I am definitely a modernist who prefers maximalism.”
Instead of trying even more ornamentation and pattern, as many designers did at that time, Mr. Natal decided to immerse himself in design styles from the past to see what forms and patterns could find and reinterpret.
“I am inspired by looking back because I think you need to know the design and history of art to be able to advance,” he said. After starting his own design firm in 2001, he found a niche in the interiors rich in colorful elements and sculptural forms, which reinvented the historical touches through a contemporary lens.
“The first project I did was a small apartment for a room for my sister,” Natal said. “Everything was pattern in the pattern in the employer. I did it on purpose, so I looked different from everyone else.”
Today, Mr. Natal continues to be inspired by a variety of sources, including the 19th -century regency style and the spatial age furniture of the 1960s. But there is a particular style that perhaps has caused the greatest impression of all: Art Deco.
“I love Art Deco,” Natal said. “That was when Art Nouveau is modern,” he said, when the style reached the world stage at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris.
“It was at the same time when the Bauhaus architects were really withdrawing everything,” said Natale, “and Art Nouveau became geometric, with very clean lines.”
Because he is associated with twenty years, he added, Art Deco, who presented decorative elements that celebrate simplified forms and exotic materials, “has always had a bit of glamor.”
The Natal Mr. has aimed to channel that glamor while designing interior interiors and products for the house sofa a new turn in the 100 -year style.
A townhouse that recently completed in Manhattan, for example, is in layers in pink, light green, gold and multicolored marble; simplified forms; and repetition patterns. “The owners were real in Paris when they bought the house, and were eating outside in Maximalist Parisian restaurants every day,” said Natale, who wanted to reflect in their new home.
Inspired by the French style of the 1920s and 1930s, in the living room he installed a tapestry paper mural based on an abstract painting of overlapping forms of Wassily Kandinsky, but unexpectedly combined it with a Cushy Gianefoman Frattini. In the shower in the primary bath, he added a decorative touch similar to the wall with assembled marble pieces such as a puzzle. In the dining room, he created an aerodynamic roof medallion made of rectangular blocks arranged in a circle, and covered an adjacent wall with a pink and smoked mirror composition, playing the art deco approach on heating materials, reflexive material materials
“I think a very good designer or architect tells a story,” Natal said. “There is a story and elements of surprise, while walking around the house.”
Mr. Natale’s color and patron hug, he said, comes from his childhood. His parents were immigrants from Italy and built the house of their dreams in Sydney in the 1970s. “Natale’s house was all the tiles and marble, with patterns everywhere,” he said. “My love for the employer has always always the leg for my family’s house.”
Mr. Natale’s appreciation for such decorative touches and interest in the past, is also a team in furniture, carpets, wall sizes and home accessories that designs and sells through its website and retailers such as Bergdorf Goodman. Its Anjelica bar cabinet, for example, has a circular shape with wooden doors with a hole and polished brass details that give it a jazz feeling. Their home accessories include vases that remember skyscrapers of the early twentieth century. And its back designs include number inspiration patterns with asymmetric arrangements of curved and straight lines made in a multiple color.
The will of Mr. Natale to make trends while developing his own voice as a designer, has won many fans, and his project portfolio has expanded far beyond Australia, to houses in England, Greece, Switzerland and the United States.
“It’s very innovative,” said Cara Woodhouse, an interior designer based in New York who follows Mr. Natale’s work. “Its use of material, color and shape is very attentive, and can take something old and make it new and fresh.”
The designer Jonathan Adler is another admirer. “Some people simply have it,” said Adler, who wrote the prologue of Mr. Natale “the interior to measure”, adding that both he and Mr. Natal share a deep appreciation for Art Deco.
“Art Deco is very ornate and very minimal at the same time,” said Adler. “That is a difficult balance to attack. But that’s what Art Deco is and what Greg can do.”
The Stella diva of Mr. Natale is a case in question. Inspired directly to the Chrysler building, and ringed in pink and gold triangles, reduced the striking decorative elements of skyscrapers to strict geometric shapes and gathered them in an arrangement as playful as the Memphis design of the 80s.
However, Mr. Natale is not about to let Pigeonholt. Once in design pluralistic, he continues to try to break the crowd, noting that he has recently admired the angular and modern work of the mid -century of the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa.
“In architecture and interiors, we are going through this moment very curvilinear and very organic,” Natal said. “So I thought it could be good that we start to present some more clear lines.”
This September, plans to enter a collection of home accessories called Land, which will include bowls, boxes and vases. Inspired by Tomba Brion de Scarpa in Italy, which presents concrete structures composed of rectangles, staggered details and circular opening, Mr. Natale said the pieces will explore architectural shapes and textures.
Anxious to stay ahead of trends, “I look back,” he said. “But I also wait in front.”
