Thinking Small
“Right now, people are trying to live in a more thoughtful way,” says Craig Nealy, sitting in the 550-square-foot Back Bay studio he has called home for the past year and a half. It’s an unexpected retreat for an architect who’s designed five-star hotels and retail spaces for luxury brands like Louis Vuitton. “For me, it’s partially a carbon footprint thing; mine is shrinking. And I’ve learned that you can make do with less space and less stuff.”
For 30 years, the Boston-born architect lived in an apartment in New York City and maintained a house near his family in Vermont. “When you live in New York, you have to get away as often as possible, and I was paying for my place in the city, as well as to heat a house I was only in two days a week.” He was attracted to Boston, where he now works as a senior principal at Stantec, because of what he sees as a renaissance in its technology, academic and medical communities. “The mindset here produces ideas,” he explains. “And I can walk to the symphony or restaurants or museums.”
Nealy moved into the building owned by Fisher College thinking that it was only temporary. “But I’ve found I really don’t need more space,” he says. “I just roll out my futon at night to sleep, and then in the morning, I leave. It’s very reductive, and for now, I’m really liking that.”
What his apartment lacks in volume it more than makes up for in elegance. The walls are white-on-white, their only embellishment the Baroque plasterwork and two windows overlooking Beacon Street. He designed much of the furniture, including the pair of armchairs and the glass desk flanked by three beautifully upholstered slipper chairs. Bric-a-brac has been pared down to several paintings propped against the walls, a large mirror over the fireplace, a Chinese screen that belonged to his mother, some family heirlooms and a few finds he’s collected along the way, like a statue he picked up in Shanghai and a L’Esprit de France bust from the 1940s.
Three of Nealy’s previous homes have been featured in design publications, and the fact that this one will be too gives him an impish grin. “It’s small, but it’s really all I need. And it still has a sense of glamour and romance. When you have less stuff, you feel the space, and you inhabit the volume. It’s very cinematic.”
Home Is Where the Art Is
Take a look at how design pros decorate their own urban abodes.
By Jonathan Soroff | Photos by Matt Delphenich | April 21, 2017
Thinking Small
“Right now, people are trying to live in a more thoughtful way,” says Craig Nealy, sitting in the 550-square-foot Back Bay studio he has called home for the past year and a half. It’s an unexpected retreat for an architect who’s designed five-star hotels and retail spaces for luxury brands like Louis Vuitton. “For me, it’s partially a carbon footprint thing; mine is shrinking. And I’ve learned that you can make do with less space and less stuff.”
For 30 years, the Boston-born architect lived in an apartment in New York City and maintained a house near his family in Vermont. “When you live in New York, you have to get away as often as possible, and I was paying for my place in the city, as well as to heat a house I was only in two days a week.” He was attracted to Boston, where he now works as a senior principal at Stantec, because of what he sees as a renaissance in its technology, academic and medical communities. “The mindset here produces ideas,” he explains. “And I can walk to the symphony or restaurants or museums.”
Nealy moved into the building owned by Fisher College thinking that it was only temporary. “But I’ve found I really don’t need more space,” he says. “I just roll out my futon at night to sleep, and then in the morning, I leave. It’s very reductive, and for now, I’m really liking that.”
What his apartment lacks in volume it more than makes up for in elegance. The walls are white-on-white, their only embellishment the Baroque plasterwork and two windows overlooking Beacon Street. He designed much of the furniture, including the pair of armchairs and the glass desk flanked by three beautifully upholstered slipper chairs. Bric-a-brac has been pared down to several paintings propped against the walls, a large mirror over the fireplace, a Chinese screen that belonged to his mother, some family heirlooms and a few finds he’s collected along the way, like a statue he picked up in Shanghai and a L’Esprit de France bust from the 1940s.
Three of Nealy’s previous homes have been featured in design publications, and the fact that this one will be too gives him an impish grin. “It’s small, but it’s really all I need. And it still has a sense of glamour and romance. When you have less stuff, you feel the space, and you inhabit the volume. It’s very cinematic.”
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