Silent theatre

By Victoria Redshaw

A new decade has dawned for Dubai and we face many new challenges regarding its future direction.

From a design perspective we have reached a crossroads, and must all take time to decide what path to take. Behind us lies ostentation and excess, side roads could take us towards mimicry and gimmickry, but the open road ahead, although the most difficult, offers us complete creative freedom, leading us towards authenticity, intellectual beauty, simplicity, refinement and innovation.

This month, in the first of a series of trend features, I want to highlight how ‘simplexity’ can be applied to design and play a central role in how Dubai’s design world moves forward as it adapts and changes. Simplexity can be interpreted into a design ethos of ‘simplicity layered with complexity’. It results in interior designs where nothing is superfluous, everything is considered and meaningfully significant, and there is complete balance and harmony.

The focus here is to make the complex look simple and to allow what appears to be simple to also have an underlying layer of complexity. We refer to this trend as ‘Silent Theatre’. The wow-factors are whispered!

It is a styling that is easy on the eye, offering a visual rest that is at once quiet and stimulating. It is not a return to minimalism. The trend includes plenty of pattern, colour tones, texture and interesting forms… but the look is restrained, pared down, sophisticated, mature, unobtrusive and never knowingly ostentatious! It is a trend all about ‘just enough’ in a world of ‘too much’, and heralds the death of ‘bling’.

Modesty becomes chic and this is crucial to the trend’s attitude – an attitude that reflects a growing mood in society that is slowly turning its back on ostentation, and instead turning towards the virtues of restraint and moderation.

However, this trend is not without drama. It has a strong theatrical mood which relates to the use of exaggerations of scale that create impressive ‘stage set’ schemes which dwarf all that enter them, like the magnificent Mondrian Hotel in Miami by Marcel Wanders.

This South Beach hotel is quietly striking, sculptural, luxurious but understated, and displays a modest beauty. Wanders’ design includes elegant innovations and oversized, weighty architectural features, whilst modestly applied concentrated layers of dense pattern pull guests in, attracting their attention and admiration. Try using familiar patterns in unfamiliar ways and in unusual places.

The Silent Theatre trend also promotes a respect for old craftsmanship and the deep beauty that old techniques can bring to new products and schemes. Search the archives and respectfully innovate the classics – history will lead us to a successful future.

Historical fabrics also have their place in this trend, including heavy satins and heavily embellished but lightweight fabrics relating to the theatrical costumes of the great operas and ballets.

In fact, fabrics can be seen to have a major influence on this trend, and not always in obvious ways; delicate pendant lights and chandeliers made from fine porcelain appear draped, twisted or folded; furniture shapes are sculptural and embellished with bold ruffles and ruche detail, intricate rosettes and softened origami influences. Many surfaces also relate to paper; scrunched-up, crumpled, folded, cut-out, embossed and impressed.

Elsewhere this trend is made up of smooth surface finishes, sometimes slightly chalky, often fleshy and always sensual. Wallcoverings are flocked, sequinned, satiny, embroidered and lacy in texture and appearance.

There are also protective qualities – a padded appearance that gently cossets and safely surrounds us. Finally, there is undeniably a subdued, elegant art deco influence that informs the shapes of hard furniture pieces, lighting and interior concepts, as well as splashes of baroque.

The quiet colour palette ranges from pale nudes, intimate pinks, blush tones, lilac tinted greys and purple nocturnes through to liquorice. The palette is completed by pale gold, rose-tinted gold and translucent smoky black that delivers dark moody shadows with a sepia mood.

Timeless style. Essential Beauty.

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