Project author архитектор Александр Кратович answered questions from SALON-interior magazine.

SALON: What wishes did your customers have?

- My customers - and this is a married couple - travel a lot, have traveled all over the world, but especially love Europe with its ancient castles, monasteries, palace complexes. They wanted a classic interior. But the classic is different. What style to choose? This question was quickly answered. Having been in their old apartment, I saw a respectable interior in a classic style (in a white and yellow tint with gold and dark wood). The first thought was to offer the customer to make their new home in a similar style, but they wanted something completely different - a bright, colorful, modern, even somewhat theatrical interior. This wish complicated my task, but I found a way out. In memory came the work of the French decorator Jacques Garciawhich are distinguished by modern reading of the classics. Especially since shortly before meeting with my new customers, I visited France, in Bordeaux, where the most interesting new hotel was designed by this outstanding designer.

S: That is, you decided to create an interior of the house at the intersection of classic and modern?

- I began to look for my own tricks of modernizing the classics. I gave all the decorativeness to the planes - wallpaper, carpets, as well as small details. Large elements made, on the contrary, concise in form and color. As a result, lamps in the form of monochrome tents, lamp-shades and black furniture are strictly and clearly (and therefore particularly impressive) look against the background of variegated wallpaper and carpets. This technique allowed us to avoid overloading with details, which sometimes suffers from classic interiors. In the decoration of the walls of the hall, living room and kitchen applied deliberately the same type of wallpaper, differing only in color: dominates the purple, complement its anthracite and black. This group of rooms for the style of the French ampuribut it looks modern.

S: Are there any other European associations here?

- Yes of course. The office with a billiard in the center, leather sofas and armchairs, a library, a large clock on the wall, a wooden ceiling and walls decorated with brown - tweed pattern - wallpaper, to the image of the English club. And the pool, with azure water and walls lined with light stone, creates an image of the Mediterranean. The frieze at the entrance to the pool and the gable above the pool is decorated with graphics using the Grisaille technique based on the Pompeian frescoes.

S: How comfortable to live in such a bright interior?

- You know, this is after all taste things. My customers are very comfortable here. They say that the interior has turned out just radiant.

Project author Александр Кратович: “It's good when the customer is already familiar with some works of the architect, represents his style, his capabilities. Even if this is a public facility, such as, for example, a restaurant in Minsk in my project, where my customers have been before they met me. They found me when they needed to rebuild and decorate the house. ”