January 30, 2015

2014 BOY Winner: Residential Interior

A restrained modernism characterizes architecture by Chet Callahan. Interiors by Ghislaine Viñas, on the other hand, are exuberant and fearless, especially in her approach to color. So, how did these two come together? On Callahan’s own Los Angeles home, to boot? The answer is simple: family. When the first of two adopted baby boys came into the lives of Callahan and his investment banker husband, they bought a 1930’s Spanish colonial.

“Making it fit our lifestyle,” Callahan says, was the goal. Out went the ground level’s warren of rooms. Upstairs, glassing in a sleeping porch created a true master suite, with a bathroom.

The 2,600-square-foot plan now worked perfectly. But it lacked soul. “My big idea,” Viñas says, “was color blocking.” Quarters for the boys boast swaths of bold stripes. She painted deep-orange horizontal ones in the bedroom, then laid a rug with sunny orange chevrons. Meanwhile, the playroom is awash in aquatic verticals.

For the master bedroom, heretofore pristine white, she went with hot pink. Starting by the foot of the bed, she painted a wide band of pink from wall to ceiling. Actually, her New York contractors did the painting. She flew them in to ensure precision—no blurring of lines chanced in a room where an architect would sleep.

Project Team: Vané Broussard; Brandon Lenoir; Morgan Pederson: Ghislaine Viñas Interior Design.

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