I had an opportunity to design a standalone boutique hair salon for a small lot in Buckhead. The client had big ambitions with a budget that made me wonder if the project could happen at all. The site context was sleepy yesteryear going caffeinated future: neighborhood streets of little early 20th century cottage-like homes repurposed for salons and tiny art galleries and bespoke retail shops were being devoured and re-constituted as parcels for larger developments. There is an entrepreneurial charm to these streets, but progress is culling them, and the city grows.
I designed a pragmatic, efficient box to fit the programmatic demands, and then gave hair extensions to this small, two story salon that would give it an arch, fabulous presence to match its proprietor’s sense of grandeur and drama. Why look back in time and pretend to be one of those little houses, when you can condition and curl the facade, and be whoever you feel like you are. Thinking beyond metaphor, maybe we’re really talking about persona here. Subtle reinvention and focus of persona. That’s exactly what a facade is, isn’t it?
Concept study for voluptuous horizontal strands…
Metaphor is usually the well-worn tool of the poet; the results are felt singularly, in our hearts. Architects wield it just as well, though with less subtlety, because the results are there for all to see and experience from here, on the sidewalk. Facade of Beauty Salon as Architectural Hair. Oh I get it.
You and I, we could talk about poetry and architecture and the noble use of metaphor and all the subjective feelings they supply; we could walk through the city and swagger under all the weight of whether a particular metaphor would be a good idea, if it should be allowed, if metaphor itself should be divorced from the capital A in architecture. But with Technology assisting us: our computer drafting programs parametrically waved the flat plane like a curtain, and sliced the curtain into strands, and then numbered and dimensioned the strands, so when combed into place, they became the thought we had.
If you’re going to go for it, go for it all the way. Believe you’re worth the $400 color and the $200 cut, and the world may believe it right along with you. Pricing came in and Compromise bumped up against the execution of the architectural idea: when you design something that is applied (as ornament?!), its cost will be seen as a line item that could be removed. As the Owner contemplated the thought of not following through with the extensions, I suggested that what remained would be like a box of hair dye on the pharmacy shelf…could he really do that to us? What do we deserve?