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Project: MRJ Rundell Associates
Publication: Art Review
Date: February 2005
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Unconventional designer and architect Mike Rundell doesn't use picture hooks or tasteful track lighting to bring artworks into his clients' homes, discovers Helen Kirwan-Taylor. Photography by Ed Reeve.
Mike Rundell lives behind the blue door-immortalised by the film Notting Hill - only now the door is painted black 'I suppose to keep it the original colour would have been a public service,' he says, 'but I got tired of being woken up by wretched
Italian tourists.' Had they managed to get behind the door and down a short passage, they would have found themselves in a courtyard facing what was once a Baptist chapel (the original door remains) But rather than being greeted by a bell tower or a crucifix, they would have encountered an enormous bronze flag with a picture of Lenin on it 'It was decorating the KGB building in St Petersburg,' says Rundell 'The year was 1993. They were throwing all that stuff away. They were going to sell it for the price of scrap metal, so I offered them the same amount of money'
This is to say that Mike Rundell is not your average designer/architect. Having graduated from both Oxford University and Camberwell with a BA in Fine Arts, Rundell has found his niche among art lovers' collectors and artists for whom a space is not a space unless it revolves around art. Fifty per cent of his work is restaurants and galleries (he designed Pharmacy and White Cube, and is now working on Jay Jopling's new gallery in St James's); the rest is residential. But while most designers
start with the architecture and then fill - or even better not fill - the space, Rundell does the opposite. 'The art must be considered from the very start,' he says. 'It's an integral part of creating a space. A very common mistake is to finish a room using art that is not of the same quality as the architecture.' If the art hasn't yet been purchased as in the case of one client, Rundell sketches it into the plans anyway.
You won't find many picture lights or picture hooks in his spaces 'I Iike building art into the walls. I find it sculptural,' he says' 'Hanging is decorative. As for tracks, they make the place look ephemeral' as though the owner is thinking of moving the work at any moment.' Rundell is a fan of propping or tilting, as it is now called - a trend, borrowed from galleries, that started in the mid-1990s when collecting photography became popular. Leaning paintings against walls and on
shelves makes both the art and the space feel more casual (it's meant to look like a random arrangement when in fact a designer has spent hours laying the pictures out first on a grid) It also means that' for the collector with more art than walls, the art can be easily rotated' Propping fits neatly into architects' lexicon because having low shelves or resting canvases against walls leaves long expanses of unencumbered white wall space. But Rundell draws the line at the
latest New York fashion for displaying canvases and photographs on chairs. 'I find that pretentious,' he says. 'A painting on a chair is a good installation if that's what the artist intended. Otherwise it's saying, "I',m adding my own creativity to this".'
Publication: Art Review
Date: February 2005
Download PDF
Living off the wall
Unconventional designer and architect Mike Rundell doesn't use picture hooks or tasteful track lighting to bring artworks into his clients' homes, discovers Helen Kirwan-Taylor. Photography by Ed Reeve.
Mike Rundell lives behind the blue door-immortalised by the film Notting Hill - only now the door is painted black 'I suppose to keep it the original colour would have been a public service,' he says, 'but I got tired of being woken up by wretched
Italian tourists.' Had they managed to get behind the door and down a short passage, they would have found themselves in a courtyard facing what was once a Baptist chapel (the original door remains) But rather than being greeted by a bell tower or a crucifix, they would have encountered an enormous bronze flag with a picture of Lenin on it 'It was decorating the KGB building in St Petersburg,' says Rundell 'The year was 1993. They were throwing all that stuff away. They were going to sell it for the price of scrap metal, so I offered them the same amount of money'
This is to say that Mike Rundell is not your average designer/architect. Having graduated from both Oxford University and Camberwell with a BA in Fine Arts, Rundell has found his niche among art lovers' collectors and artists for whom a space is not a space unless it revolves around art. Fifty per cent of his work is restaurants and galleries (he designed Pharmacy and White Cube, and is now working on Jay Jopling's new gallery in St James's); the rest is residential. But while most designers
start with the architecture and then fill - or even better not fill - the space, Rundell does the opposite. 'The art must be considered from the very start,' he says. 'It's an integral part of creating a space. A very common mistake is to finish a room using art that is not of the same quality as the architecture.' If the art hasn't yet been purchased as in the case of one client, Rundell sketches it into the plans anyway.
You won't find many picture lights or picture hooks in his spaces 'I Iike building art into the walls. I find it sculptural,' he says' 'Hanging is decorative. As for tracks, they make the place look ephemeral' as though the owner is thinking of moving the work at any moment.' Rundell is a fan of propping or tilting, as it is now called - a trend, borrowed from galleries, that started in the mid-1990s when collecting photography became popular. Leaning paintings against walls and on
shelves makes both the art and the space feel more casual (it's meant to look like a random arrangement when in fact a designer has spent hours laying the pictures out first on a grid) It also means that' for the collector with more art than walls, the art can be easily rotated' Propping fits neatly into architects' lexicon because having low shelves or resting canvases against walls leaves long expanses of unencumbered white wall space. But Rundell draws the line at the
latest New York fashion for displaying canvases and photographs on chairs. 'I find that pretentious,' he says. 'A painting on a chair is a good installation if that's what the artist intended. Otherwise it's saying, "I',m adding my own creativity to this".'
