Life in Expressionism · Interior by Brani & Desi

The
concept

The owners were not given rooms. They were given a world of art to enter. The title belongs to Expressionism, where form and color are not description but pressure: they make a mood, they force an idea, they move a person from warmth to confidence, from comfort to the will to make. Sharp, acute forms carry the warmth. White is the held breath between one shape and the next. To live here is to feel before one understands.

35Photographs

06Rooms

2015Magazine cover

Munich, around 1910. Dusk.

First, a painting on its side

Wassily Kandinsky comes back to his studio as the light goes. Against the wall a canvas burns, all color and form, with nothing in it he can name. It is the most beautiful picture he has seen in days. He steps closer. It is his own painting, lying on its side.

He wrote later that in that moment he understood how the recognizable object can stand between a person and a picture. Color and form were already enough.

What if a room could do the same?The question behind this house

This house repeats the experiment. It turns the room onto its side and lives in what remains: shape, color, and the white between them.

A composition in the spirit of that evening. Turn it as you like.

How the idea reached this house

1896Haystacks, Moscow
Before a painting by Monet he feels its force long before he can say what it shows. Soon he leaves the law to paint.
1911On the Spiritual in Art
Color and form are named as powers that act on the soul directly.
1923The Bauhaus question
Which color belongs to which form? The yellow triangle, the red square, the blue circle.
1926Point and Line to Plane
The canvas becomes a field of tension, where the acute angle burns warm.
2015This house
In Sofia those ideas become wall, floor and light, and then a magazine cover.

Inner necessity

Every form has a reason that is felt before it is explained. Nothing here is ornament.

Inner sound

Colors resound as instruments do. A room is tuned the way an orchestra is tuned.

Affinity

Certain colors belong to certain forms. The sharp form carries warmth, the soft form carries calm.

The Bauhaus pairing of yellow with the triangle, red with the square and blue with the circle is the quiet law beneath the shapes on these walls and floors.

Three misreadings of Expressionism

“It concerns appearance.”

It concerns what is felt. The Impressionist paints what the eye receives; the Expressionist paints what rises from within the person. So this house began with a mood, and only then chose a color.

“It belongs in the gallery, not in the home.”

Kandinsky wanted the reverse. If color and form act on the soul, the place to meet them is the room where a life is spent. The Bauhaus, where he taught from 1922, was founded on carrying art into daily life.

“He was always an artist.”

He trained in law and economics and taught at the University of Moscow in his late twenties. At thirty he gave it up for painting. The late start did not loosen his rules. It sent him looking for them with more urgency.

Brani & Desi's bedroom design on the March 2015 cover of Interior Design Magazine, USA

Cover · Interior Design Magazine, USA · March 2015

The hours of the house

A house is lived through a day, and the day changes its color as it passes. Move the marker.

07:00

Bathroom

For Kandinsky certain colors have an affinity with certain forms, and together they work upon the human soul. Enter, one room at a time.

The short poems in each room come from our books The Home Missed Itself: four slim volumes of 33 interior haiku each.

The entrance into the house, with the open plan and kitchen ahead

Open plan with green and blue shapes on the walls

Open plan with red and yellow shapes and a green stripe on the floor

View toward the entrance door, with red and green angular shapes

Kitchen

Red. The morning arrives as a cry.Orange follows: a bell, a laugh, a crowd.Yellow cuts into the cupboards. More light.Pot. Bread. Knife. Hunger.Only the white holds its breath between the blows.

“All the plates are red,”
said the cupboard
to the white plate.The Home Missed Itself, Book 1

Kitchen wall of white shelving with red and yellow triangular niches and a mirrored pendant lamp

Close view of the kitchen worktop, hob and open shelves with orange and yellow shapes

Kitchen counter with a glass pendant lamp, bread, herbs and a red cast-iron pot

Narrow kitchen with an orange stripe running from the worktop across the floor, and yellow and orange open shelves

Kitchen with orange and red angular shapes on white surfaces

The warmest room in the house. Red and orange carry its energy: the red sharp and loud, the orange rounder, more given to company. The yellow niches press forward like a call. White is the pause that lets the strong colors breathe.

Energy
Warmth
Sound

Through Kandinsky’s eyes.Inner sound (innerer Klang)Kandinsky heard color. Red was for him a full, strong sound, near the tuba and the drum; orange a church bell, or an alto voice singing with confidence. This is the loudest room, tuned on purpose.

Dining room

Blue: a table under deep water.Green: the quiet after an argument.Seven chairs. Eight hearts. One fire.The cold is cut by angles, and warms.

The table invites
all four-legged chairs.
The sofa relaxes.The Home Missed Itself, Book 4

Dining table with white tulip chairs and blue and turquoise shelves on the wall

Kitchen island and dining table with red and yellow geometric shelving in the background

White tulip chairs at the dining table, wire pendant lamps and blue and turquoise shelves

Dining table beneath the library loft, with a hanging mirrored fireplace and green and blue shapes on the walls

Dining area: a white door with yellow lines, an angular white sideboard with a sink, and blue, yellow and green geometric shapes across the walls and ceiling

Dining area with a green wall and blue shapes

Dining area with turquoise surfaces and white geometry

Dining area with a green lounge seat and blue shapes above

A table for seven or eight. Blue and green bring calm and release to the meal. The acute edges of the colored shapes warm the cool hues, so the room welcomes and does not withdraw.

Calm
Relaxation
Warmth

Through Kandinsky’s eyes.Cold and warmKandinsky divided colors into warm and cold, and held that the acute angle has a warmth of its own. Here the cool blue and green lie inside sharp shapes. That is how the room stays warm.

Living room

Green. Green down to the floor.The eye drinks, and drinks, and drinks.Then red: a wound on a cushion, a shout in the stairs.And the calm wakes, alive.

The sofa breathed
the butterflies on the curtain —
and the cushions flew
toward the flowers.The Home Missed Itself, Book 1

Living room seen toward the kitchen, with green shapes on the white floor and a glass coffee table

Living room with a white armchair, red and green cushions and lime green shapes on the floor

Living room with a red armchair, white sofas and lime green shapes spreading across the floor, with the loft above

Stairs with red and green angular steps beside the entrance hall and a kitchen counter with an orange stripe

Red and green shapes running down the stairs

Stairs with red, green and white shapes seen from above

The room for rest and for talk. Green, the color the eye accepts most gladly, appears in many shades. Red, its complement, stands in the furniture, the cushions and a few shapes by the stairs, and keeps it from sleep.

Conversation
Balance
Togetherness

Through Kandinsky’s eyes.Complementary contrastKandinsky found green the most restful of colors, so calm that it risks standing still, like a contented cow in a field. Red keeps it awake. Opposites on the color wheel do not quarrel here. They keep each other alive.

Bedroom

Lilac falls from the ceiling like a thought.The lines run down the walls, across the floor, through the sleeper.A yellow chair: a small sun that will not set.One picture. And you in it.

The yellow cushion yellowed,
the contemplating sofa mistook it
for the moon.The Home Missed Itself, Book 2

Bedroom with a lilac ceiling shape, a turquoise blanket, a yellow chair and a desk

Bedroom with lilac and turquoise shapes on the ceiling, a yellow throw, a turquoise blanket and a work desk by the window

The room of the magazine cover. Lilac and turquoise give calm and softness; the yellow of the chair and throw, and the lime of the pillows, keep it playful. The lines of the ceiling descend the walls and cross the floor, so the whole room reads as one composition.

Calm
Softness
Playfulness

Through Kandinsky’s eyes.The basic plane (Grundfläche)In Point and Line to Plane the canvas is a living thing, with its own tension at every edge. Here the room is that canvas: wall, ceiling and floor are one surface. (He distrusted violet. The lilac is a small, friendly provocation.)

Bathroom

Blue. Electric. Violet. Ice-bright turquoise.Water without water.Edges of light split the ceiling.Stand still. Breathe. The day has not touched you yet.

The shower cabin by the bed
pitches a tent.
The bathtub — rest.The Home Missed Itself, Book 4

Bathroom with blue vanity, a purple washbasin and turquoise and white geometric walls

Bathroom seen from above, with a blue bathtub, vanity and geometric shapes

Bathroom, second angle: a large corner bathtub with water, purple and blue mosaic tiles, and blue shelves with glass bottles and candles

Bathroom, third angle: a toilet, bidet, sink with yellow and orange towels, and a bathtub with water surrounded by blue and purple geometric shapes

Bathroom, fourth angle: a bathtub with water, a large window, a sink with a yellow towel, and blue shelves with bottles

Electric blue, violet and turquoise make the room cool, fresh and clean, like water. Acute white shapes and the lit edges of the ceiling bring light into the cold colors, and small accents, a yellow vase, touches of orange, give them contrast. A glass partition opens the bathroom to the bedroom, and the two rooms share one geometry.

Freshness
Clarity
Light

Through Kandinsky’s eyes.The call of blueThe deeper the blue, wrote Kandinsky, the more it draws a person inward and toward the infinite. This is the room for it: a place to be silent with oneself before the day begins.

Library

Up. Above the rooms, above the noise.White shelves, sharp as a held breath.Books: silent, listening.Glass, and nothing between you and the whole house.White is not empty. White is the rest before the note.

The Home shone.
All the colors spoke,
the white wall was their silence.The Home Missed Itself, Book 2

Upper-level library with white shelving, glass balustrade and a lime green lounge chair

Library level with yellow, blue and green shapes

An upper level, open to the rooms below. White shelving in acute forms holds the books; the glass balustrade keeps the space transparent. Green and lilac continue from the living room, while yellow and turquoise lines on the ceiling draw the eye upward.

Reading
Quiet
Light

Through Kandinsky’s eyes.The pauseWhite, for Kandinsky, was not emptiness but a silence full of possibility, the rest in music before the next note. The shelves are white so that the books can be heard.

Six rules for living in a painting

Let white work. It is not empty. It is the pause in which color is heard.
The sharp form carries warmth. Set a cold color inside an acute angle and the room stays kind.
Choose the color for the hour. Ask what you wish to feel here, at this time, and paint that.
Use every surface. The wall is not the only canvas. Ceiling and floor belong to the same composition.
Give opposites a place. Red beside green, yellow beside violet. They keep each other awake.
Keep the real things real. Books, plants, people and food are the only recognizable objects here, and the colors exist for them.

Innere Notwendigkeit

Inner necessity. Every form here has a reason that is felt before it can be said.

And what does your room sound like?

FromNew York

March 2015. The first copies of Interior Design reached Sofia in a box, with the house on the cover.

The box from New York

01
The box
One Priority Mail box. Inside, our bedroom, printed.
The copies, unpacked

02
The stack
Not one copy but a whole pile, every one of them the same room.
Carrying the first copies

03
The walk
Then down a Sofia street, the house in our arms.
Brani and Desi with the issue

04
The balcony
And at last, the pages open, the colors on paper.