Through the Threshold

This week we had to design a threshold to our apartment. Redesigning the stairwell was a pressuring task as its the first thing you see when entering the space. I chose to channel Gretchen’s “transitional” narrative from her paintings and use bold colour extensively across the space.

I considered a few ideas, where the stairwell was mostly white but with pops of colour, but I figured I would go all out with bold contrasting colours in larger scale as Gretchen does in her semicircular works.

I took inspiration from these paintings she has done, especially in terms of the contrasting colours and also the use of a clean vertical split to seperate the 2, as if turning the horizon vertical.

I played around with a multitude of colour combinations in order to create this stairwell design, until finally settling on an orange/coral in contrast with a deep aquamarine.

I decided that this felt very linear, as I perfectly split the stairwell down the centre and either side is an opposing colour. So in order to break it up and add a circular element, I decided to take the ovular shape Gretchen uses and turn it in to a door shape. It matches well with the shape of the bathroom mirror and also the green glass separators, as they all have the same shape.

📷To make further connection to her work, I chose to create stepping pads on the stairs, these are a round puffy circles, similar to the texture and shape of a whoopie cushion, these are bent to fit the contour of the stairs and the rise. First I tested the cushions in blue against a textured base (the orange and teal), however changed my mind and created a polished reflective space with soft stepping pads. This adds a very playful element to the space, especially once I settled on this vibrant yellow colour.📷